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Anthroposophy springs from ihc work and teaching ofRudolf Sieiner. He described it as a path of knowledge, to guidethe spiritual in the human being to the spiritual in the universe.

The aim of this annual journal is to bring the outlook ofanthroposophy to bear on questions and activities relevant to thepresent, in a way which may have lasting value. It was founded in1949 by Charles Davy and Arnold Freeman, who were its firste d i t o r s .

The title derives from an old Persian legend, according towhich King Jamshid received from his god, Ahura Mazda, agolden blade with which to fulfil his mission on earth. It carriedthe heavenly forces of light into the darkness of earthly substance,thus allowing its transformation. The legend points to the possibility that humanity, through wise and compassionate workwith the earth, can one day regain on a new level what was lostwhen the Age of Gold was supplanted by those of Silver, Bronzeand Iron. Technology could serve this aim; instead of endangering our plantct's life, it could help to make the earth a new sun.

Edited by Simon Blaxland-de Lange. Jan Swann,Warren Ashe and Andrew Wolpert

T h e G o l d e n B l a d e

C o n t e n t sFirst published in 2005 by The Golden Blade

© 2005 The Golden Blade Edi tor ia l Notes 7

All rights reserved. No part of this publicationmay be reproduced without prior permission of

' Problems of the Time: Lecture 113

The Edi tors 1 R u d o l f S t e i n e rc/o Wynstones PressRuskin Glass Centre i Problems of the Time: Lecture 2 31

Wo l l as ton Road Rudolf SteinerA m b l e c o t e !

Stourbridge Special Spiritual Foundations for the Connection betweenWest M id lands England and the United States of America 4 7

D Y 8 4 H F Virginia Sease

Shadows of Doubt 6 5Terry Goodfellow

True Columbia 7 3

Christopher Houghton Budd

The Future of the English Language 8 5Adam Bit t lest on

Distinguish without Dividing 9 9Terence Davies

Book Reviews:

The Isles by Norman Davies 121Simon Blaxland-de Lange

ISBN 0-9531600-8-4ISSN 0967 6708 Poems for the Path by Sean Byrne 1 2 7

£ 8 Margaret Jonas

Typeset by DP Photosetting, Aylesbury, Bucks. Notes on the Contributors 1 2 9Printed in Great Britain by Cromwell Press, Trowbridge, Wilts.

7

Charting the Void - Editorial Notes

To record a voyage never before undertaken is not to draw a map forthose who might come after, it is to make the consciousness of thejourneying an objective fact. Actually, here are no voids, just ourinability at first to see what's there. And in a Michaelic venture we knowour destination only by going there. In this sense, to make a chart is tobear witness, as St John says of the Baptism, "I saw and bare record".

Faced with the terrible, frightening and seemingly inexorableevents of the world, whatever else we can or cannot do, accompanyingthe brutalities of war, starvation and natural disaster with presence ofheart and openness of mind is a spiritual activity that depends at firstonly on our will to do so. The significance of such witnessing is immense.It may at first seem passive, ineffective, and even depressing, but we donot do this in a vacuum, we are not staring at these horrors in a void.Such presence is "in-formed" by everything that lives in us, and all thespiritual activity we have engaged in is ready to support our trust thatthe apparently gratuitous cruelty and wrongs are not meaningless. Evenmore, can we have faith that what lives in our wakeful "presence"actively contributes to what happens? Then we may begin to understandwhat Rudolf Steiner alludes to when he says in the second of the twolectures we have included here "What is to be grasped does not exist! Wemust be stirred with burning zeal for the understanding of what does notyet exist". The nature of our present consciousness is formative for thefu tu re .

The way Leonardo in The Last Supper depicts the fourth Evangelist, the other John ( a figure now subject to the most speciousnotoriety in one sector of current sensationalist fiction) offers us anexample of this creative present inner activity. Placed in the midst of thedrama at the table, John, with his folded hands betokens the will for aninner, as yet unrealised, resolution to the outer conflict shown in theapparent antagonism between the right hand of Christ and the left handof Judas. It is not that John's intimate connection allows him to relaxknowing it will all be alright: his initiate status enables and impels himto will with burning love what does not yet exist. Rudolf Steiner'sdescription of this individual as the raised Lazarus (who thus, alone

8 C H A R T I N G T H E V O I D 9

among the twelve, has been initiated) invites us to realise that such a , fold human being became a basis for him to offer a paradigm for socialfigure has not been raised merely to know more, but actually out of that j renewal that has come to be known as the Threefold Social Order, anknowledge to do something that the others cannot. The figure at the impulse that has not fared as fruitfully as many others that he was to givecentre of the table needs the utmost conscious, active, presence of the 1 in the succeeding years. These lectures were given within days ofdisciple on his right. It is this conscious participation in destiny that anthroposophy having been the object of repeated printed attacks bygives one level of meaning to the phrase "the disciple whom Jesus Jesuits. It was a year in which Rudolf Steiner spent much of the timeloved". Initiation brings added tasks, not privileges. We today can take j revising earlier published works for reprinting in new editions. Theup more tasks spiritually than we might dare think, at first maybe Just in , painting of the small cupola was in progress in Domach, the building wasthequalityofourpresence, even without having been formally initiated. in its fifth year of construction, and it was during this time that the

If we further notice which other three disciples Leonardo paints | original designation "Johannes-Bau" was formally replaced by the nameclosest to Christ we find in Peter Thomas and Judas the individuals | Rudolf Steiner had begun increasingly to use, "The Goetheanum".whose destiny it was to manifest the all too human qualities of fear, | Today one might ask whether a reference to Bolshevism is stilldoubt and hatred. There is something terrible and tremendous in the relevant or even intelligible to many readers, and the term American-reality that among the twelve Christ chose, there were three who, in | ism seems strangely dated since more recent world events have castaddition to whatever else they did, had the task of embodying these | other more obvious shadows over how the US is now perceived. Butaspects of our human incompleteness most in need of redemption. j these lectures deal with realities that concern us no less today than

In the first of the lectures we have included here Rudolf Steiner when they were given. Rudolf Steiner's description in the second lec-refers to these three counter-evolutionary forces in the context of his ture of how the essential quality of the universally human transcendstime. He speaks about three pervasive attitudes discernible in the world all nations makes it clear that the phenomenon that he calls Amer-and connects them with the contemporary political and social realities icanism cannot be countered with anything "anti-American". Histhat his audience would have recognised. He speaks about a certain more detailed differentiations of various European cultures in the firsthatred of the Spirit that manifests in the ideology of what was to become j lecture are also not to be mistaken as a basis for categorising people,the Soviet Union, and he calls it Bolshevism. He describes how parti- The events in the world and what was happening around Rudolf Stei-cularly the Jesuits within the Catholic church have long striven to deny ner give these lectures a particular poignancy. What must it have beenordinary people the opportunity to understand the realities of the Spirit, like to see so much, truly bear witness to these events, and know whatand this doubting of the possibility of knowledge of the Spirit is what , the people around him were ready to hear? There is no trace of chau-characterises Jesuitism. And it is fear of the Spirit that Rudolf Steiner vinism or prejudice in the way he articulates his observations. A fur-ascribes particularly in the attitude to science to what he calls Amer- ther responsibility arises for us today out of these considerations,icanism. He is at pains to point out that this does not refer to American Especially not in this Michaelic Age should we be tempted to regardindividuals or that it only exists in America, but that there is an aspect of someone's nationality, or race, or religion as a basis for understandingculture in America that seemed to favour this regressive Way of thought. that individual. This is not to deny the realities of the differences in

RudolfSteiner gave these lectures in Berlin in his 58th year during language, culture heritages and inherited features that have con-the last months of what was known as The Great War. American, tributed to forming who we are and that we have even chosen for aCanadian, and Australian troops were part of the allied armies under purpose. But we are challenged to recognise that in each of us there isGeneral Foch when the decisive turning points occurred in overcoming an ego, one of whose tasks it is to begin the momentous process ofthe German amues during the late summer and autumn of 1918. It was a transforming these given, outer distinguishing features. Can we grasptime when RudolfSteiner was thought by some to be too pro-German. In the idea that while we have chosen certain characteristics in this incar-his attempt to see and contribute to the forces of world destiny behind the nation because we need them and they serve our destiny, we also mayouterevents,hewasconcemedwiththespintualtasksofapeopleandnot have chosen others that need our ego forces and that are yearning towith their political and military fortunes. But the inner reality of the three- be transformed? The universally human is something we have to

1 0 CHARTING THE VOID E D I T O R I A L N O T E S 11

achieve. And one area where we can practise is not to fall prey to thespectres of hatred that outer world events seduce us with.

We can recognise in our own inner life how very present thechallenges mentioned in the first lecture are to our thinking, feeling andwilling. It is a significant step to realise that doubt has the task ofawakening a longing for practical experience. The answer to doubt is notto preach certainty, but to let experience refute the scepticism. Theentrenched position of antipathy longs to be freed through the zeal forunderstanding. Enthusiasm is the antidote to hatred. And if our will islamed by anxiety, it is a glorious moment when we know it is better torisk being wrong than refrain from acting out of fear. Courage involvesrisk. In these lectures we are also reminded how Lucifer and Ahrimanwork together, and we know them both in all three soul forces. It is in thesecond lecture that Rudolf Steiner characterises the great healing forcesof the Christ who incarnated into the man Jesus. Now in each of us,striving for the universally human there are the forces of balance,waiting to be realised.

Also in the face of the world events we can endeavour to bespiritually present with active inner equilibrium. We cannot shirk thepainful understanding of the political and economic forces that seemparticularly visible in the English-speaking nations. A most insightfulcontribution to an understanding of all this in the modern Americancontext has appeared in an article by Chris Schaefer in the latest editionof LILIPOH'. In this issue of The Golden Blade Terry Goodfellow takesup these sobering themes in a broader modern world context, andconcludes his article with a reference precisely to the "universallyhuman", as the source of light that can dispel the shadows of doubt. Inthe same lecture Rudolf Steiner cautions us against the dangers ofseeking causes without considering the longer time perspectives, and it isjust such a rich historical context that Virginia Sease develops in hercontribution. She shows in several different spheres and through thelives of prominent figures how the common foundations of Britain andAmerica are of greater significance than the present divisions, and thatthese precious cultural links need our conscious nurturing, lest they beundermined by forces of hatred.

One of the features that Virginia Sease explores extensively is that

of our common language, and we felt it appropriate to include in thisissue a reprinting of Adam Bittleston's article from the 1957 GoldenBlade. In Rudolf Steiner's description of the role of the Celtic peoples wefind another example of how the events of outer history do not necessarily give an obvious clue to deeper forces of change. Militarily theCelts were defeated and they declined, spiritually the Folk Soul of thesepeoples took on another task, and Bittleston sees the withdrawing of the"noble intermediary", as he calls the Celts, as a deed that allowed theuniting of the Germanic and Romance streams in our language. Modemscholarship is also engaged with this elusive nature of the Celticelements, the recent book by Michael Morse^ takes up the very openquestion and challenges some of the long-held assumptions about whothe Celts were and where they came from.

There is an unmistakably positive tenor in this article and in theother three final contributions. Christopher Budd's counterfactualmethodology might seem bizarre and naive, but he invites us to recognise that the concepts that arise from this unorthodox historicalapproach have an unexpected compatibility with modern economicthinking. There is courage in postulating such ideas. Terence Davies'slambent article on the cultural connections between Britain and Europeis a cogent appraisal of Owen Barfield and his championing ofColeridge. The book review by Simon Blaxland de-Lange points to thedynamics and forces of progressive change in modern history, an optimistic view in what is easily seen only as a depressing reality.

We offer this edition to our readers with the wish that all thesecontributions will serve in strengthening the courage and good will forour journey into the future, an unknown and uncharted future, and yetone that depends as never before on what we make of it. We are mostgrateful to all those who have written for this issue and to AnneStockton for her imaginative cover design. I would also like to thank mycolleagues on the Editorial Team for having invited me to work withthem on this issue.

Andrew Wolpert

' LILIPOH, 2005, Special issue: America; Lilipoh Publishing Inc., Phoenixville, PA, 19460;The Will to Power and its Tragic Consequences for America and the World by ChristopherSchaefer, Ph.D. pages 19-24.

^ How The Celts Came To Britain by Michael A. Morse, Tempus Paperback 07524 3339 3.

13

Problems of the Time: Two lectures given by Rudolf Steiner inBerlin on 30th July and 6th August 1918

Lecture 1: 30th July 1918

R u d o l f S t e i n e r

Today we will go rather further in outlining the connections we havetried to understand in the course of our recent studies.

The present time, with its many diverse streams, spiritual andmaterial, is extremely difficult to understand; and the effort ends only inperplexity unless we are truly willing to recognise the causes as lying far,far back in the womb of history. Let us look back, as students ofspiritual science, at the so-called fourth post-Atlantean period.

This begins, as we know, somewhere around the year 747 beforethe Mystery of Golgotha, and ends with the beginning of the fifteenthcentury, around 1413 AD. (The dates are of course to be regarded asapproximate, as always in matters of this kind.) Within this period, as weobserve it, we can perceive certain forces, connected with and related toeach other, but differing fundamentally from all others working inprevious and subsequent epochs. This period, in which the developmentof the intellectual or mind-soul in man's being took place, can be dividedinto three smaller ones: the first begins around the year 747 BC (which isthe real date of the founding of Rome) and ends around 27 BC; thesecond runs from 27 BC until about the end of the seventh century (693AD); and the third and last from 693 to 1413 AD. Since this date, sinceabout 1413, we have been at the point where the distinctive qualities of

A lightly edited version of the unpublished translation contained in Cycle C50 {A SoundOutlook for Today and a Genuine Hope for the Future), available from The Library, RudolfSteiner House, London. This typescript contains translations of the seven lectures given bySteiner between 25th June and 6th August 1918 under the overall title Bewusstseins-Not-wendigkeiten fur Gegenwart und Zukunft ("Making sense of the present and preparingrightly for the future"), included in GA 181. The title "Problems of the Time" derives fromthe 1954 revision of the English translation. The original lectures were untitled. Thetranslation printed here appears by permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung,Dornach, Switzerland.

1 4 C H A R T I N G T H E V O I D

soul-forces familiar to us now are already to some extent apparent. Justas this fourth post-Atlantean epoch can be clearly distinguished from thethree preceding ones (the ancient Indian, Persian and Egypto-Chaldean)and must also be sharply distinguished from what followed it and whatis still to come, so within it there are certain factors characteristic for thecultural evolution of humanity which stand out, if we consider its progress through these shorter periods.

Between 747 and 27 EC the peoples inhabiting the region aroundthe Mediterranean come chiefly into prominence. We see a distinct formof soul-life developing amongst them. History hardly mentions it,because history has no means of creating the ideas and concepts whichwould enable it to gain insight into what was characteristic about thissoul-life. This epoch which I have identified can be characterised bysaying that it is the time when, for inner reasons of human evolution,human souls are separated from their connection with the universalspiritual world. If we look back to Egyptian and Chaldean times, duringthe epoch of the sentient soul, we find in human consciousness a distinctsense of kinship on the part of the human soul with the cosmos. Thesentient soul in human nature was then able to perceive that man is amember of the whole cosmos. We cannot rightly envisage what ischaracteristic of the Egyptian, Chaldean or Babylonian stages of evolution unless we take into account the fact that man at that timeexperienced a feeling of kinship with the spiritual cosmos. Just as thefingers on our hand feel themselves part of us, as it were, so the Egyptianor Chaldean felt himself to be a member of the spiritual cosmos. A crisis,a veritable catastrophe, overtook mankind in the eighth century beforeChrist, in respect of this feeling of kinship with the cosmos. Human soulshad owed their former feeling of belonging to the cosmos to theiratavistic, dream-like clairvoyance. They did not perceive as we do today.Although materialistic science ignorantly calls this "animism", in the actof sense-perception they also perceived the spiritual, the divine; andthrough this they felt themselves as being connected with the spirit of thec o s m o s .

This relationship disappeared. The consequences were, on the onehand, numerous phenomena of decadence, but, on the other, the wholemarvellous culture of Greece, whose civilisation was founded on whatman experiences when, as a human individual, he begins to stand alonein the universe. We owe this civilisation to the fact that man no longerfelt himself to be a member of the cosmos but as a human totality, as abeing complete in himself. He had in a sense taken his own place in the

P R O B L E M S O F T H E T I M E : L E C T U R E I ^ ^

cosmos, had began to live a life of his own. If Greek civilisation hadretained the soul-constitution of, for instance, the ancient Indian period,with its sense of connection with the cosmos, it is impossible to imaginethat this beautiful Greek civilisation could ever have arisen. All thesplendour and glory displayed by Greek civilisation, unequalled elsewhere, developed in the time between the eighth and the first centurybefore Christ. Humanity had withdrawn into the citadel of the soul, ofthe human soul in the true sense. This was the time when humanitybegan to approach the Mystery of Golgotha. We must not forget thatthere is always something about the Mystery of Golgotha which cannotentirely emerge into the light of human understanding, even supersensible understanding. There will always be something that is notcomprehended. It is beyond the power of human concepts, humanfeelings, human experiences, fully to grasp what was achieved by theentry of the Christ into earthly evolution. Therefore this Mystery ofGolgotha had, in a sense, so to take place that, while it was in progress,human civilisation was not ready fully to share in it; it had to take itscourse separately, alongside ordinary human experience. That is fairlyevident, even from history. How much did human civilisation aroundthe Mediterranean take note of what happened in the remote Jewishprovince of Palestine with regard to Christ Jesus? How little did it enterthe awareness of civilised humanity, even that of Tacitus, who waswriting only a century after the Mystery of Golgotha!

On the one hand we have the stream of human civilisation, and onthe other the stream which brought with it the Mystery of Golgotha: thetwo run their course side by side. This could only happen because man -civilised humanity - was at the time of the Divine Event severed from thedivine, was living a life which had no direct connection with the spiritualworld. Thus on the Earth there took place a spiritual event which washappening alongside human civilisation. Such a juxtaposition betweenouter civilisation and a mystery-event is unthinkable in any earlierperiod. It had never happened before, because in earlier times humancivilisation was aware of itself as having a relationship with events in thedivine-spiritual realm. It is very distinctive, very remarkable, that thesecular culture which ran parallel with the Mystery of Golgotha wasremote from it: man had severed himself from it.

In the second period, which lasted from about 27 BC to 693 AD,mid-European civilisation was not in a position to enable the secularculture of that time to come to an understanding of the Mystery ofGolgotha. This may sound very strange, considering that Christianity

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had made itself at home in this secular culture and had spreadthroughout mid-European civilisation; but its expansion took place inthe way I have described. The Mystery of Golgotha was isolated, wasalone. Certainly, it was accepted as outer dogma to this extent: Christhad come, had called Apostles, had accomplished this or that forhumanity, had said this or that about man's relationship to the divine.All this was readily accepted in terms of external principles by secularculture, but this outer recognition does not alter the fact that in realityall those who accepted Christianity in these early centuries were farremoved from an inner understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. Withthe help of the Gnosis, with the help of much preparation through allthat had been carried over as treasures of wisdom from the ancientpagan world, they might have come near to facing the question: Whatreally happened at the Mystery of Golgotha? They did not do so. Theydeclared heresy anything that might have led to an understanding of it,and tried to express in trivial formulas what could never be thus confined, what can only be fathomed through the highest fruits of wisdom -the Mystery of Golgotha.

Hence the organisations fostered during the early Christian centuries were not such as to help people to unite themselves with theMystery of Golgotha; their effect was to encourage in the human soulsomething very remote from a genuine inner understanding of, andparticipating in, it. The Church was, rather, an organisation for the non-understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. Anyone who follows upwhat the various councils, and more especially the intrigues of theChurch, strove to accomplish will find that all these efforts went towardsgetting certain dogmatic ideas accepted; whereas all that had to do withthe Mystery of Golgotha was to be thought of as having no realrelationship to the life of the human soul. All this led up to a certainpoint, which can be described, somewhat radically, in the following way.Human beings tried to accommodate themselves, here on Earth, tocertain ideas concerning the Mystery of Golgotha and its effects; but themost important thing was not the extent to which they could come toknow about it and to absorb it into their souls. It was that they should beable to adopt this belief: "We grasp the fact that the Mystery of Golgotha was accomplished on its own account, independently of us, andChrist will take care that we are saved!" This tendency gained grounduntil the reality of spiritual events was relegated to a region quite outsidethe soul. Sacred, spiritual events were not to be thought of as connectedwith what took place in any human breast; the two were to be as widely

separated as possible. Within this tendency lay the germ of a purpose -unexpressed, of course, but active subconsciously - which emergedclearly for the first time at the Council of Constantinople in 869. The aimwas to keep the human spirit away from any individual, personal concern with the spiritual - now focussed around the Mystery of Golgotha -and therefore from any inclination to understand the Mystery of Golgotha in terms of personal experience. It was to remain incomprehensible. So the Church was able to include more and more people of apurely secular frame of mind, who increasingly came to believe that onecannot think about supersensible realities, since the supersensible isbeyond the range of the human soul, and that human thinking shouldconfine itself to the objects and activities of the physical world. Noforces were to be developed out of the human soul which could lead toan independent understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. In certaindecrees of this eighth Council of Constantinople it is clearly stated thatEuropean humanity might not - because the forces of the human soulwere not equal to it - reflect on the realm wherein the deeds associatedwith the Mystery of Golgotha were enacted.

In this middle period of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, lastingfrom 27 BC to 693 AD, it came about that humanity was confirmed inthe belief that all human knowledge and experience is adapted only forthe sense-perceptible "this life"; the non sense-perceptible, supersensiblerealm, the "beyond", as it is called, must be withdrawn from humanknowledge and experience and be inaccessible to direct perception. Theentire history of these centuries can be understood only by keeping thisin mind. The whole policy of the Catholic Church was directed tobringing human beings to the belief: Your faculties of knowledge aresuited only for the things of this life; as regards the supersensible, youmust approach this in a way that has nothing to do with your understanding, with your own faculties of knowledge. The effect of this wasthat after the end of this period, in the eighth and ninth centuries, a sortof obscurity descended on European humanity as regards this connection of the human soul with the supersensible. And such laterphenomena, among which such a person as Bernard of Clairvaux istypical, can be explained only by the fact that such men remained in asense beyond the physical, in the "other world", their souls absorbed inwhat is inaccessible to ordinary human understanding. This enthusiasmfor something which lies beyond all human comprehension must be seenas belonging to the entire soul-disposition of a Bernard of Clairvaux, inso far as it can be understood. In his personality we find many traits

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which are great and powerful in their efTects, for what is capable of asomewhat distorted quality can equally manifest one that is beautiful,great and glorious. But Bernard had characteristics which clearly showhim to be a product of that disposition of soul which developed inWestern civilisation in the way that I have described, during theseparticular centuries. Many others like him could also be named - he ismerely a typical figure, as exemplified by when he spoke to his followers(who were very numerous) about all that would be bestowed onhumanity by the Crusade that he contemplated. Then came the failure ofthe whole enterprise. How did this devout man speak of the failure?Somewhat like this: "If everything, everything goes wrong, may theblame be on me alone, not on the divine, which must always be right."Even when such a man was convinced of his connection with what heconceived of as the divine-spiritual power behind events, he separatedthe one from the other and said: "Lay the sin at my door; what is right issomething that takes its own course in a realm beyond and apart fromthat of the human soul."

Thus at the beginning of the third period of the fourth post-Atlantean cultural period something akin to a darkening came overhumanity. The best way to express this is to say that mankind no longerhad the concepts to recognise a connection with actual spiritual streamsand impulses. In the philosophy of the centuries between the eighth andthe fifteenth one always finds the same aim - that of proving that humanideas and concepts should by no means attempt to grasp the course ofspiritual reality, on the grounds that this should be regarded as a matterof revelation (happily reduced to a mere formula) and left to the doctrinal authority of the Church.

This is how the power of the Church had been built up. For it didnot derive purely from theological impulses, but from the fact thathuman beings were directed to relate their own cognitive and soul-forcesonly to the physical life of the senses and not to think in terms ofknowledge of the supersensible. Hence there arose the concept of belief,which was not in existence in the early centuries (although it is sometimes ante-dated) but developed later. It took this form: Concerning thedivine-spiritual only faith is possible - not knowledge. This divisionbetween the truth of belief, or faith, and the truth of knowledge aroseout of a definite historical context, which is not only significant but canbe discerned in such matters as I have described.

Since the fifteenth century and approximately since 1413, we havebeen living during a period (this will become evident in the third mil

lennium) in which we are concerned in part with the heritage of all thathas happened under such influences as I have described. On the onehand there are the legacies from those days; on the other we have to dealwith something that is entirely new in this fifth post-Atlantean period. Inthe fourth period, when we look back at it, we see that there was a kindof severance of the human soul from the divine-spiritual, a banishmentto purely external physical processes. That was what was new in thefourth period. It did not exist in the Egypto-Chaldean epoch, as I havealready pointed out. We now likewise have to deal with something newin our own epoch, and humanity's task - for humanity has entered atime when self-consciousness must play an ever greater and greater part- is to distinguish between what is a legacy from a previous age and whatis being newly added to it from our own time. Let us first look at theinheritance, the legacy.

We have seen that it consists in man feeling compelled to develophis soul-life apart from the supersensible. There is, moreover, anotherresult of this, the more clearly to be seen the closer the events of historyare surveyed; indeed, a searching review shows the fact to be unquestionable, admitting of no doubt whatever. For it becomes clearlyapparent that man, confining his soul-forces to the sense-perceptible,was willing to be severed from the supersensible and finally - since thefifteenth century - arrived at rejecting the supersensible altogether. Theeighth Council of Constantinople in 869 is characterised by the wish tokeep man and the supersensible apart; and from this separation, sponsored deliberately by the Church, sprang the rejection of the supersensible. The belief arose that the supersensible might be only a matter ofimagination and have no reality. If one investigates the genesis ofmodem materialism historically from a psychological point of view, theChurch must be held responsible for it. Of course the Church is only theouter expression of deeper forces working in man's evolution, but toobserve how one thing arises from another enables one to understandthe course of human evolution. In the fourth post-Atlantean age, aperson of orthodox views would say: "The human faculty of knowledgeis suited only for understanding what is connected with the realm of thesenses. The supersensible must be left to revelation, which may not becontested; to speak against revelation is heresy and can only lead tod e l u s i o n . "

The modern Marxist, the modem Social Democrat, who is a trueinheritor of this view, which is none other than the consequence of theCatholicism of earlier centuries, says: "All knowledge worthy of the

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name is concerned only with sense-perceptible, physical events; there isno spiritual science because there is no such thing as spirit. Spiritualscience is, at best, social science, the science of human communities." Ofcourse this tendency manifests itself differently in various parts of thecivilised world, but the differences are no more than nuances.

Hence from the ninth century onwards, in the central and westerncountries of Europe, it became necessary to ensure that human soul-lifeshould occupy itself with the supersensible by believing in it, but shouldknow of it only through revelation. The qualities of the races andpeoples of central Europe were such that they had to be handled carefully; and so the above approach was not adequate on its own. To say topeople: "Your human capacities must be limited to eating and drinkingand the things of the outer world; the supersensible is beyond you" -that could not be done in Western Europe; but it was done in EasternEurope, and that is the reason for the cleavage between the Eastern andWestern Churches. In Eastern Europe people were really confined to thesense-world; that is where their capacities had to unfold. And in theheights of mystery-experience, quite untouched by anything to do withthe senses, was to be developed what then led to the Orthodox religion.Thus there was a deep separation between what man brought forth outof his human nature and the true spiritual world, which lived only in theritual that hovered loftily above mankind.

What was it that had to develop there? The point of view, thefeeling that had to develop in varying nuances was that it is only thephysical world of the senses that has reality or meaning. It could be saidthat unexercised forces towards which man adopts an attitude ofrepression do not develop but atrophy. If, then, humanity was restrainedfor centuries from spiritually grasping the supersensible, the power ofdoing so was bound in the end to disappear completely. This is what wefind in the modern socialistic views of life, the misfortune of whichconsists not in their socialism but in the fact that they entirely reject thespiritually supersensible and are therefore obliged to confine themselvesto a social structure which takes account only of the animal side of man'snature. Such a social structure was prepared for by the paralysing ofman's supersensible forces. This has meant that human beings are forcedto say to themselves: "Care for our salvation shall not in any way makeus unite our soul's knowledge and experience with a self-perpetuatingstream of life - the stream which includes the Mystery of Golgotha".

With what is this connected? With the fact that in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch the Luciferic forces were especially active. They severed

man from the cosmos, because their aim is invariably to isolate man inselfishness, to cut him off from the whole spiritual universe, as well asfrom the knowledge of his connection with the physical one. Hence whenthis severance was at its height, there were no natural sciences. That wasLucifer's doing. The activity which separated sense-knowledge fromdogma regarding the supersensible was therefore a Luciferic one. Overand against it stands the Ahrimanic influence; and these two are thegreat adversaries of the human soul. The fact that the supersensibleforces of humanity have been allowed to atrophy - leading to a purelyanimal form of socialism, now about to overwhelm humanity in adevastating and destructive way - is to be traced to Luciferic forces. Thenew influence, developing in our own age, is of a different nature, moreAhrimanic. The Luciferic element would isolate man, cut him off fromthe spiritually supersensible and lead him to experience the illusion ofbeing a totality in himself. On the other hand, the Ahrimanic elementinspires man with fear of the spiritual, keeps him away from it, fosters inhim the illusion that the spiritual cannot be attained by mankind. TheLuciferic keeping away of man from the supersensible might be described as of a more educational, cultural kind, whereas the Ahrimanic,founded on fear of the spiritual, is more nature-bound, arising as it doesin an age which began with the fifteenth century. And as the Lucifericseverance from the spiritual came especially to expression under thecover of the Orthodox Christianity of the East, so the Ahrimanic fear,the holding back from the spiritual, makes itself felt especially in theculture of the West, and particularly in the element of American culture.

Such truths may be unpalatable today, but they are truthsnevertheless, and we get very little further by generalising - howevermystically or theosophically - about the connection of the human withthe divine, or however we may refer to this relationship. We can progressonly by recognising the actual state of affairs as it is. We can reduce ourchaos to order only if we recognise the true characteristics of the different streams running side by side. These various streams, springinglocally from their various predispositions, then spread out, and everything becomes confused in the hotchpotch called modem civilisation.

What I am now referring to as "Americanism" (as a collectiveconcept, not applying to individual Americans) is fear of the spiritual,the longing to live only in connection with the physical plane, or at mostwith what intrudes into that plane as coarse spiritualism and such-like,which is not in the real sense spiritual at all. The mark of Americanism isfear of the spiritual; it is by no means confined to America, but there it

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lives as a social characteristic, not simply a human one. Above all it ispredominant in all science. Science has in this period since the fifteenthcentury increasingly been giving rise to what one might call "fear of thespiritual". Nothing in science is called objective unless it excludes as faras possible living conceptions engendered in the inwardness of the soul.No idea, no conception that is engendered in the inner regions of thesoul is permitted to intrude into the observation of nature. This isallowed to embrace only what is dead, not the living that is interwovenwith spirit. If, in the manner of Hegel, Schelling or Goethe - thosegenuine representatives of Mid-European thought - anyone introducesthe "concept" into observation of nature, he is at once thought to be onthe road to uncertainty, for no objective reality is ever expected to beattained through spiritual understanding or experience. It is assumedthat this means introducing personal bias, that an experiment ceases tobe objective directly anything subjective enters into it. That is Ahri-manic. Science is universally "American" insofar as it clings to thefundamental maxim that everything subjective must be banished froman observation of nature. This is what, on a basic level, has arisen out ofthe earlier severance from the spiritual world in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch.

Thus a new element is added to this legacy - a new element whichwill make itself felt more and more as a destructive force alongside allthat needs to develop fruitfully - consciously - in the future. It isessentially of an Ahrimanic nature, it is fear of the spiritual - and itbrings havoc and disintegration into all human culture, which must befounded in the spiritual.

At the transition from the fourth to the fifth post-Atlanteanepoch, and during the fifth epoch, these impulses become more andmore noticeable. With the discovery of America, and the transplantationinto America of European culture, fear of spiritual life appeared theretoo; but on the other hand there arose what might be called a tension inhuman souls, for the native forces of the peoples in Europe were suchthat they could not fail to some extent to be aware of their own connection with the spirituality of the universe. A tension arose at thetransition from the fourth to the fifth post-Atlantean epoch of civilisation, during the centuries in which what is known as modem historytakes shape - a tension caused by the suppressed spiritual element in thehuman heart. Certain people decided that a barrier had to be put upagainst it, partly because they understood very well what was left of theold inheritance, and partly because they had a very pertinent grasp of the

newly approaching Ahrimanic element. This was the source of thatspiritual stream - a much more influential one than most people think,as I mentioned from a different point of view in my last lecture^ - whichtries to perpetuate this keeping of the human soul at a distance from thesupersensible: in other words, Jesuitism. Its inner principle is to doeverything possible in human evolution to keep man at a distance fromany real, conscious connection with the supersensible. This was, ofcourse, facilitated by presenting the supersensible dogmatically as arealm into which human knowledge could not penetrate. But the Jesuitmovement knows very well how to reckon with the other aspect, and itwants an inner relationship with modem science that is akin to thatbetween modern science and Americanism. In that respect Jesuitism isgreat: it recognises the importance of physical science and makes a deepstudy of it. Jesuits are great spirits in the realm of physical, materialscience, for Jesuitism reckons with this basic tendency of human nature-which must be overcome through guiding human nature towards thespiritual world - to have fear of the spirit. It counts, moreover, on beingable to impose this fear on society by saying to people in so many words:"You cannot and shall not approach the spiritual world; we are trusteesof it and we will purvey it to you in the appropriate way".

These two streams of thought, Americanism and Jesuitism, playinto one another, as it were. This is not something to take casually; in allsuch matters we must look for the deeper impulses which are active inhuman evolution. If we try to identify the forces which have broughtabout the present catastrophe, we shall find a remarkable cooperationbetween Americanism - in the sense intended here - and Jesuitism. Andfrom a wider point of view we see, on the one hand, how the inheritancefrom earlier times still influences our mental life, and on the other theadvent of something new. If we specify these two impulses as' theLuciferic and the Ahrimanic, we describe precisely the oppositiontowards that true spiritual life which must be introduced into humanevolution for the salvation of mankind. Anyone who approaches withinner sympathy such a figure as Bernard of Clairvaux, who in a certainsense inclines towards the Luciferic, will take account of the followinattitude: "Human powers of cognition are directed only towards thesense-perceptible; so we shall direct the soul to seek the divine-spiritualin a mood of fervour, of elemental experience." This is what kindlenthusiasm in a temperament of that kind. We might say that what lives2 23rd July 1918.

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in human souls as a tendency towards the spiritual aspect lives on in ourtime, but there is also the other tendency - towards the dark and sombreaspect. The twelfth century had its Bernard of Clairvaux; ours has suchfigures as Lenin and Trotsky. As in former times there was an activeinclination towards the supersensible, so in these figures we find hatredfor it, even though expressed in different words and substance. That isthe dark reverse aspect of those times: there the pouring of the humansoul into the divine mould, here the pouring of man's being into ananimal mould, on which alone a social structure is to be built.

These matters can be understood only if one has a clear grasp ofone fact, which is remote from present-day understanding. Our time iscredulous with respect to theories, taking the content of ideas andprogrammes for gospel, as I have often remarked. But it is reality thatcounts, not theories and programmes. The modern follower of Marx, atthe turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, before the world-war,would have said: "This is what Marx teaches, what Engels or Lassalleteaches; and that is all that one needs to strive towards". Such a personknows that this must be striven for if humanity is to be healed. It wassimply a question of the content of programmes and ideas. But in realityit is never a question of that, for ideas are never implemented in life inaccordance with their content, but by means of forces which are quitedistinct from it. No-one understands the state of things unless he knowsthat ideas often have so little to do with reality that they come tomanifestation independently of their content. A splendid programmecan be devised, established on a sound scientific foundation, ferventlylonged for as the Marxists long for theirs, but all to no purpose. For anage as unspiritual as ours, this is playing with fire. People believe thatthey are working to implement the substance of their ideas, but anyonewho knows how things happen in life knows that the reality is quitedifferent. If ideas are not derived from spiritual knowledge they enterinto cultural life as sheer monstrosities - and this applies to the ideas ofMarx, which are intended to banish the spirit. However fine they maybe, they become abortive creations. It is no use asking in the morning:"Why has it grown light through what has happened on the Earth?" Onehas to turn away from abstract ideas and say: "Daylight has comebecause the sun is shining". In going out beyond the Earth one sees thereason for the daylight. Similarly, if we want to understand what is goingon now, we must look away from what is happening in the immediatepresent to what was taking place a long time ago. Bolshevism cannot beunderstood except by recognising it as an after-effect of the eighth

Ecumenical Council of 869. You cannot understand it except as a resultof the atrophy of the forces which man once had for apprehending thesupersensible world. In order really to understand the happenings of theouter world, in order to confront them, we must perceive this innerconnection. For anyone observing the relations of events in history it isthe most fearful thing to see how movements which set out to reform theworld are concerned only with the conceptual content of ideas and haveno concern about their effectiveness, which is an altogether differentmatter from whether or not the ideas themselves are beautiful. Supposea child is bom, a beautiful child; its mother is delighted with it. Mothersare sometimes delighted even when children are not beautiful! Itbecomes a good-for-nothing, a ne'er- do-well, perhaps even a criminal.Is it therefore untrue to say that it was a beautiful child? Had people noright to say that it was? Does its childish beauty contradict theunforeseen things in its life? In a similar way there have in certain circlesof people been men with admirable ideas through which they wanted toreform the world, and these men were admired; yet the ideas becameabortions! For ideas are in themselves dead things; they must be animated by being received into the vigorous life of the spirit.

In reading modern socialist publications one finds - if one disregards certain discrepancies - a great similarity between them andwritings which express the standpoint of the Catholic Church, eventhough the latter are differently expressed and deal with different realms.For instance, I recently read to you out of a certain brochure. Noticethe kind of thought in it, its thought-forms; compare what is said therewith the rabid tendencies - whether cultured or not - which lead gradually to Bolshevism. Compare it with the beginning of a publication byKautsky or Lenin; you will find the same thoughts. One is a development of the other. Nowhere does one get a stronger feeling of Catholicism than in reading certain dogmatic socialist utterances. Butsomething which Catholicism forbids - philosophising about certainthings - has become a passion, a principle: the principle of declaring thatall learning comes from the bourgeoisie, and all spiritual developmentfrom the class-struggle. This principle is the effect of the Catholicprinciple. Bolshevism may, perhaps, in the form of its inception, haveonly a short existence; but all mankind will have to reckon long enough

' In his earlier lecture on 23rd July Steiner had quoted from certain Catholic publicationswhich, he claimed, indicated that the mood that had led to the Inquisition and the burningof heretics was alive and well in the nineteenth century.

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with what stands behind it. Anyone who knows how it all hangs togetherwill not be surprised that Bolshevism should have arisen in the placewhere this way of thinking, in all its bestial quality, proceeded under thecover of the liturgy of the Orthodox religion, so that the one stream wascompletely separate from the other.

We must fathom all these things if we want to be conscious of thenecessity for approaching the spiritual life in the right way. Mystical talkabout it is out of place today. What is needed now is to apply spiritualknowledge so as to look into reality and discover the connectionsbelonging to it; because from such knowledge alone can a correct graspof the world's events arise. It can never come from past legacies, or fromfear, or from this elemental new thing I have described, which can butlead deeply into chaos. In this animalised socialism we see displayed oneresult of what developed in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. It has aLuciferic element in it; the Luciferic "original sin" is within it. But whatis now developing is the penalty for that general incapacity of humanfaculties for turning to the supersensible. These faculties have becometruly impotent, and hatred and rejection of the supersensible arise intheir place. There is not merely hatred and original sin, but punishmentfor the forsaking of the supersensible. This applies to much that ishappening today.

The impulses active in human evolution take on various nuances,and events can be understood only in this light.

The peoples of the Italian and Spanish peninsulas came under thesway of Christianity in the course of its expansion, as well as the peoplesof modem France and the British Isles. We know something of what hasunfolded amongst them. We know that on the Spanish and Italianpeninsulas the sentient soul has blossomed forth; on French soil theintellectual or mind soul; in the British regions the consciousness soul;here in Central Europe the ego; and in Eastern Europe in the same way acivilisation of the Spirit-Self is to be looked for, fulfilling its role only inthe future and at present existing in germinal forms which are nowentirely hidden. Could mankind but look at Western Europe andunderstand its riddles through spiritual science! For instance, thecharacteristics of Italian regions (not those of single individuals, whichof course extend everywhere beyond the common norm) develop differently from those of French or British humanity. This latter is soconstituted that the nature of the people has a special connection withthe consciousness soul. I have characterised this extensively from certainstandpoints. Through living in the consciousness soul man is driven

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down to the physical plane, although not so strongly in the British Islesas in America. The result is that man, having been cut off from thesupersensible by ecclesiastical developments, is again led back to unionwith the cosmos. But it is only to the outer cosmos that he is led by theconsciousness soul. Therefore the British people, as Britons, actuallyfind their union with the cosmos through economic principles. Britishthought is essentially economic, framed on economic lines. Anyone whograsps the connection of the consciousness soul with the physical worldwill see this necessity; also that the French national character (not thatof individuals), having an affinity with the intellectual or mind soul,develops chiefly political thinking and sensibility; while the Italian andSpanish similarly have the animal-like sensuous nature, because thesentient soul is directly connected with the nature of the people. I canonly outline this, but it gives an idea of what lies in the characters of thepeoples themselves.

If we consider the German nature, developing as it has in themidst of such tragedy, we see that the ego dwells within it. The whole ofGerman history becomes clear if we consider this fact, which is disclosedfrom the supersensible world. Man's ego is the principle that is leastoutwardly developed; it has remained man's most spiritual member.Thereby the German, inasmuch as he is connected through the ego withthe spiritual world, is linked with it in the most spiritual way. He cannotachieve any connection with the cosmos economically, politically orsensuously; he can achieve it only insofar as it manifests in the soul-lifeof single individuals - as the ego invariably does - and is then extendedthroughout the people. It comes to expression most characteristically inwhat may be discerned as the essence of Goethe's genius, of Herder'sand Lessing's, as something detached, a state higher than the sense-perceptible. This is the reason for the sense of estrangement with regardto the sense-perceptible, a feeling of not really belonging to matter, whenthe sense-perceptible alone is emphasised; and it is also why the greatamount of Americanism - and of the elements which I prefer not todescribe in detail - that has engulfed Germany during the last decadeshas alienated it from the original activity destined for its national soul.

In a still higher way will Eastern Europe be connected with thespiritual through its national characteristics - and will develop an evenhigher civilisation in a spiritual sense, as a reaction to what is now takingshape there. But this is something for the future; it is not yet in evidenceand must first evolve out of the animal-like character in which it is stillc o n fi n e d .

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The Western countries of Europe are directly connected by lawfulinheritance, so to speak, with the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. Something more recent, but opposed to Americanism, resides within theGerman nature: a certain relation to the spiritual world, sought withinthe spiritual itself. The German human being, when he follows his owndistinctive nature, has no fear of the spiritual but, rather, an inclinationtowards it, as is to be found, albeit in a higher form, in Goetheanism.

This is plain speaking, of course; but you know that these thingsare brought forward from knowledge, not from chauvinism, nor said toplease anyone here. You saw in the last lecture that I understand hownot to speak flatteringly. One thing, however, must be said: within theGerman soul - though this is often forgotten in Central Europe - there isa relation of the human spirit to the supersensible world which must becultivated, and which is the exact opposite of everything else nowmanifesting on the Earth. Could we but have recognised this, if only,alas, the last decades had not brought Americanism and Russianism tobear upon this sphere, how differently science would have been workedwith in Central Europe. You know from my other lectures that a scienceof the spirit might have flowed from Goetheanism - but it remained adisregarded impulse. Has it really been grasped at all? Not yet -although within its depths lies the true being of Germany, which is, asyou will have gathered, a stranger to the others, for they are still to agreat extent animated by the legacy of the old, as well as by the new. InCentral Europe alone has something developed which has more or lessseparated itself out from both the old and the new.

By many indications we see that Goetheanism is untouched bymaterialistic science. (Goethe is prized, of course, but an ex-FinanceMinister, Kreuzwendedich, is made President of the Goethe Society!)What exists in the true, inner element of the German nature will beexperienced in other realms as a continual reproach. The easiest way toprotect oneself against what by its very nature one cannot acknowledgeis to slander it. We must look frankly at this. The best way to relate tosomething towards which one has such a living reproach is to describe itas delinquency. This is a subjective way of escaping from the reproach.Here we touch upon an important psychological fact. The slander willspread further and further, rooted in the uncomfortable feeling that thespecial relationship of this ego to the spiritual does exist. It is necessary,however, to see clearly in these matters, not to shun a clear view of them,as is done today. Had we not so much conventionalism and Americanism amongst us, we should discern that German Goetheanism and

Americanism are two opposite poles, and we should know that to regardthese two streams of the present day with an unprejudiced mind is theonly correct attitude to maintain. We should reject all exaggeratedpatriotism and look facts fully in the face.

Then we should recoil from the exalting of Americanism in whichwe have so long indulged, and perceive that this particular element willbecome more and more active as a real, deep-seated evil, because fear ofthe spiritual is its main characteristic. Those who say otherwise areshort-sighted, are not judging things in their actual context. Everythingarising from the political attitude of the French, from the economicrigidity natural to the British, or from the elemental sensationalism - theso-called "holy egoism' of the Italian people - all this, in view of thegreat events now playing their part, is but trivial compared to the trulyevil element arising from Americanism.

There are three great streams which through their innerrelationship have the greatest power of destruction in human evolution,owing to their having absorbed in various ways the legacy from the pastand the new. First among them is what I call Americanism, which tendsto produce greater and greater fear of the spirit, making the world amere opportunity for living in it physically. It is quite different whenBr i ta in wants to make the wor ld in to a k ind o f commerc ia l mar t .Americanism would make it a physical dwelling equipped with allpossible comfort, in which man can lead an agreeable and wealthy life.That is the political creed of Americanism, and whoever does not detectit is blind to the facts and merely shuts his eyes and ears. Man's connection with the spiritual world is bound to die out under such aninfluence. In these forces of Americanism lies what must actually bringthe Earth to an end, destruction dooming it ultimately to death, becausethe spirit will be shut out from it.

The second destructive element is not only that of CatholicJesuitism but Jesuitism of any kind, which in essence is to all intentsand purposes allied to Americanism. If the latter is the cultivation ofthe impulse to build up fear of the spirit, so the former seeks toawaken the belief that one should not seek contact with the spirit,which it deems impossible; it wishes spiritual blessings to be dispensedby those who are called to be priests of the Catholic Church. Thisinfluence seeks to atrophy the forces in human nature which incline tothe supersensible.

The particular symptoms of the third stream can be seen arising ina terrible form in the East: a social state based on a purely animal.

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physical socialism. Without plastering it with dogmas, we call it Bolshevism, and it will not easily be overcome by mankind.

These are the three distinctive elements in the modern development of humanity. To bring knowledge to bear upon them, so that theevents of the present day may be met in the right way, is possible onlythrough spiritual science.

Lecture 2: 6th August 1918

R u d o l f S t e i n e r

You will have seen in the last lecture that efforts were directed towardspresenting certain ideas, which we can make our own out of spiritualscience, in such a way that they can be of service to us in grasping whatsurrounds us, daily and hourly, in present-day civilisation. If today weseek to add something further to these considerations by way of a finalfootnote, this can only be sketched aphoristically. Certain significantcharacteristics of our present time will now be emphasised and broughtinto connection in various ways with what has sounded forth as thekeynote of these studies.

If we determine to keep in mind what seems to stand out particularly in our time, we shall find that, of all the limiting factors today,the worst is that the mode of thought and understanding that hasevolved during recent centuries leads people to have little foresight offorthcoming events. This is shown by the fact that most events come as asurprise, in the most curious way, and it is quite impossible to gaincredence for anything that is foreseen. It is considered inevitable thatreally significant events should take people by surprise. If one speaksabout what is to come, people are astonished - or they make ironicalremarks about one's apparent longing for some sort of prophecy. Thusif, for example, someone sought to call attention - in accordance withwhat we have said here - to what now looms over the world from the FarEast, he would at present encounter little understanding or belief, eventhough the portents of what is to come are already clearly apparent. Fartoo little need is felt for a clear insight into things. There is also areluctance to admit truths which, within the limited circles open to them,point to future events.

Of course there is no question here of any kind of soothsaying orof any sort of prophecy in the negative sense, but always of an earnest,scientific method of thought and conviction derived from spiritualscience. If we wish to ruminate upon the causes of the development ofthe trend that has just been referred to, we may perhaps have to go far

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afield for them. People are as a rule absolutely unconscious how far thecauses of a phenomenon lie from what appear to be its antecedents.They generally look for the causes much too near at hand.

If we are to look for causes of what has just been described, theymust be sought in a tendency deeply ingrained in the human soul at thepresent time - a tendency towards dead concepts and ideas devoid of lifeand vigour. It should be possible to understand that to think of thefuture, the imminent, in the same manner as one does of the past, thealready determined, is impossible; but at the present time value isattached only to what, in the current phrase, can be proved, and thisquestion of proof is wedded to the particular kind of proof which ispopular today. Anyone who rightly understands this kind of proofknows that it applies only to truths connected with things in the universewhich are in process of dying. Therefore the only science or knowledgethat we want in the present age is concerned with what is dying andperishing; and this is especially so in the case of those who claim to bemost enlightened. They welcome only a will bent in that direction. Eventhough we are not conscious of this, we prefer - in the widest sense of theword - to deal only with what is passing away. We lack the courage tothink in terms of growing and becoming, for what is growing refuses tobe grasped with the narrow, limiting concepts that are capable of proofand which are suitable for what is passing away. So people protectthemselves against the reproaches which are really implicit in what Ihave just pointed out.

To speak against these things, as one must do, involves the dangerof incurring the reproach of being an utter dreamer, dilettante orsonaething even worse. Concepts are sought which free people from theobligation of thinking about anything fruitful or endowed with seeds oflife for the future. According to this view, there is one idea that needs tobe inculcated in those who regard themselves as being the really intelligent leaders of thought: the idea of "the conservation of matter andenergy" as understood at the present time. It is taken for granted todaythat anyone who does not accept that this indestructibility of force andmatter is a truth underlying the whole of science must be a duffer. Yet itis a fact that if we truly immerse ourselves in contemplation of theuniverse, we find that what we call matter and energy are perishable andtransitory; and all the science, all the knowledge that we can attain aboutmatter and energy is a science of the transitory. Because it is insisted thatscience has to be concerned with that and that only, it is dogmaticallyasserted - in order that there might be something that is solid and

permanent - that matter, in spite of its being transitory, must be eternalor that energy must be so. This law of the conservation of matter andenergy plays a great part even for those who are not disposed to engagein a dispute with science of this kind, to the extent that it clotheseverything with mystery. Our scientific education is such that the aftereffect of the idea of the conservation of matter and energy imbues thewhole of popular literature and is regarded by the average person assomething perfectly obvious.

We know through my book Occult Science of the periods ofSaturn, Sun, Moon and Earth evolution. Nothing of what is now calledmatter and energy will pass beyond the Venus evolution. Hence even themost lasting kind of matter, that which reaches Venus, will then come toan end. We have just passed the middle of world evolution, insofar as weare able to survey it, and are somewhat beyond the middle of the fifthperiod of Earth evolution. We are beyond the mid-point and are alreadyin the period of decline, that is, when matter and energy have begun on adownward evolutionary process, have begun to pass away. The rightview to take as we study physics and chemistry would be this - that theknowledge acquired through these sciences has a bearing only upon thetransitory, which at the very latest will disappear from the universe withthe Venus evolutionary period. In the entire domain of present-dayscience there is nothing which relates to what is permanent; for by meansof the ideas and concepts that can be proved in the manner favouredtoday, it is possible to discover only what in this sense is transitory.Everything is transitory nowadays.

It is essential that a big change comes about in our ideas concerning this fundamental realm of thought, and those who considerthemselves particularly scientific have the most to leam before they canreplace their current notions with correct ones. But why am I saying this,seeing that the matter as a whole may not perhaps seem particularlyimportant?

It is actually very important, because other concepts are formedin accordance with these notions which govern what people do, they givedirection to their wills. Social and political ideas are engendered fromthis manner of thinking. They shape themselves in accordance with thecharacteristic way that these forces are made use of, with the result thatthe transitory dominates the realm of ideas and extends into attitudes oflife. This crops up in a particularly striking way as we look at the mainpoints of the programmes put forth by many who confidently regardthemselves as having the very last word in advanced thought. For

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instance, the schemes of many socialists, very much in the public eyenowadays, ail more or less adopt the theory of Karl Marx as a starting-point. This theory is the calamity of Russia today, because - for reasonsI explained last time - what is happening there out of historical predispositions is able to happen because of Marxism. This way of lookingat things is an extreme form of the determination to deal only with thetransitory. Anyone who familiarises himself with the ideas of this way ofthinking knows that the fanatical adherents of Marxism imaginethemselves to be possessed of the ideas of the future, whereas their ideasare actually related only to what is passing away. This is blatantlyapparent in the so-called socialist world-view, for throughout it refusesto countenance ideas with a fruitful bearing on the future. It preachesthe blessing of having none. One finds everywhere the formula: get rid ofeverything that exists at present; then quite out of itself, without therebeing any need to think about it, something will emerge from the unholymess. This is stated unequivocally. But although those who express theseradical sentiments have - as I said in last week's lecture - been welleducated in centuries of Church doctrines and are merely manifestingthe events of recent centuries from the Church's standpoint, one has tosay the following. In truth this view refuses to entertain ideas with anyshred of life in them; the only ones it acknowledges have to do with whatis passing away; and the only possible effect of these ideas is to workdestructively. People believe that their thoughts have a germinal power;but it is all to no purpose unless the concepts are rooted in reality. Theseideas are useless for establishing anything new; all they can accomplish isto institutionalise destructiveness. Although this image relates to abygone fashion, this socialism seems to me like a lady who cannotendure a crinoline. She hates the wide skirt and wants to alter it. Butwhat does she do? She pads it out. So it looks outwardly just the same asbefore, but it is padded out with wadding. Similarly with these socialists:instead of fructifying what history has achieved with new ideas, theyleave everything as it is - while putting themselves in place of the formerrulers. They hang on to the crinoline, but stuff it out. Even the mostextreme views represent a longing to enable what is perishing and dyingto hold sway. To what is this due?

It is due to the fact that in the concepts of present-day science,concerned as they are merely with things of the senses, based on theintellect and taking account only of material perception, all that one canencounter is the transitory, not the living. Only what in nature is alreadydying can be understood. The living cannot be fathomed. Similarly with

regard to culture, the dying can be grasped but nothing that is seed-bearing or growing. For the germinating, growing element must begrasped as a bare minimum by Imagination, the first stage of higherknowledge as described for example in the book Knowledge of the HigherWorlds. And to attain to still higher knowledge of what is becoming, oneneeds to develop Inspiration and Intuition. Those who approach suchthings with the sort of ideas held hitherto may talk as much as they wish- they are only talking of laws which apply to what is on the way todestruction, unless they allow themselves to acknowledge what supersensible knowledge alone can reveal as the realm of the becoming.Things today are on a razor's edge. It is impossible to know anythingabout certain things, and civilisation will fall into chaos if we are contentto live within it without seeking to gain insight into the spiritual world.

What we need, and what is striven for through spiritual science, isa sort of revival of the Mysteries, in a form adapted to the modern mind.Unless we understand the meaning of the ancient Mysteries, we shall notfathom the meaning of the epoch which is intermediate between themand what must come as the new form of the Mysteries. All this must beunderstood. The most startling experience for the pupils of the oldMysteries was to be shown clearly how the old, atavistic, clairvoyant,hidden knowledge was doomed to extinction. This could not be graspedby observation; it had to be revealed in the Mysteries, where people wereshown that something different from the old clairvoyant insight into thespiritual worlds was to come to mankind. There it was disclosed to thepupils of the Mysteries that this old capacity of the human soul, thisvision of cosmic expanses in imaginations, was destined to die. This wasmade clear to them in somewhat the following way. What can be perceived by physical senses on Earth is not the content of the genuineMysteries of Earth-existence; this is revealed only when the human soulascends in clairvoyant contemplation to the mysteries of the cosmos, ofthe extra-terrestrial, when cosmic events beyond the sphere of the Earthlight up within it. The ancient seers grasped all that, but not whathappened on Earth. The pupils of the Mysteries were shown thatknowledge of that type, an ascending into the cosmos in that way, wouldno longer be possible; and to those who were to penetrate into theChrist-Mystery, something further was revealed.

The following picture emerged. Although the ancient seers didnot speak of the Christ, their inspirations derived from the world whereChrist always was, for He is a cosmic Being. He dwells in everythingcosmic and universal, in the whole content of man's atavistic clairvoy-

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ance. But from the time when the Mystery of Golgotha was to come vision. In man, as he treads the Earth, lies all that will be saved from theabout, all this would no longer be accessible to human beings in the old whole of Earth existence. If we ask: "Where is the seed of somethingw a y . w h i c h w i l l c o n t i n u e t o g r o w o n a f t e r t h e E a r t h , J u p i t e r a n d V e n u s

What was happening? The Christ was descending from the cosmic evolutionary periods, which will reach beyond present-day culture intoworld to the Earth. Because the cosmos was no longer accessible to the culture of the future?", we must say: "Not in anything external to thehuman beings as in ancient times, because Christ was no longer to be Earth, only in man. In the part of his being that is accessible only tofound in the old way, because the kind of knowledge and state of soul supersensible knowledge, man bears within himself the seed for theout of which people had formerly looked at the world was dying out, the future." Only someone who has the will to grasp the supersensible is ableChrist had to come down to them. He came down to the Earth. to speak rightly of the future; for otherwise any talk of the future willEverything, therefore, which enlightened spirits had ever known of the lead to error. Thus the Christ, descending from worlds more and morespiritual world in ancient times through the pagan Mysteries and '"accessible to human knowledge, had to unite Himself with man, had tothrough pagan mystery-knowledge, was summed up in the Christ and take up His abode in Jesus and so become Christ Jesus; because only in acould be beheld in Him. People needed to recognise the cosmic Being human body could there dwell that which bears within it the future ofwho in Christ descended to the Earth from the cosmos. That was the one earthly evolution. So in the Christ we have the cosmic element which

ancient knowledge alone was able to comprehend directly; and in theThe other was this. As I have already said, in the whole external Jesus to whom the Christ came we have what will henceforth in human

world of natural, social and cultural circumstances the intellect and the will alone bear the seed for the future. He cannot be understood purelysenses can behold only what is transient, they can attain to a knowledge as Christ or as Jesus. He cannot be understood if one merely speaks ofof the transitory in nature such as will not endure beyond the Venus the Christ; for the Christ of whom the old Docetists - one of the Gnosticstage of existence. But learned men, believing that their ideas point to the sects - have spoken is beyond our power to grasp, in that he belongs tofuture, are very often immersed in what is passing away. In what the the old atavistic clairvoyance. Nor can Jesus be understood if one doessenses perceive and the intellect grasps there is no seed of the future; all not take into account the Christ who entered into him. Unless we giveof it is doomed to perish. If the only knowledge were concerned with due weight to this fact of the Christ in Jesus, we cannot understand thatthat, there would be nothing but knowledge of death; for the reality that the cosmic can be saved for the future only through the human seed onsurrounds us is itself doomed to death. Where, then, shall we find what Earth.can endure? Where is the imperishable which shall outlive what out- To understand the extent to which Christ Jesus is a twofold Beingwardly exists but is doomed to die? Where is the truly permanent ele- is a great task. The problem is that many have taken pains to createment amidst the atoms and forces to which materialistic superstition obstacles to such an understanding. In modem times it has been aattributes permanence but which are actually impermanent and heading question of inducing forgetfulness of the indwelling of Christ in Jesus byfor destruction? al l sorts of means. On the one hand there is the extreme theological

This can be found only in man himself. Amongst all the beings, teaching which only and always speaks of the "simple man ofanimals, plants, minerals, air, water, in everything that perishes, there is Nazareth", the human being of a physical nature rather than one whobut one thing which will outlast Earth evolution and the evolution to has within him the seed of the future. There is, moreover, the Societyfollow it - that which lives in man himself. Man alone on Earth bears founded to combat the Christ, and with that aim to set up a false picturewithin him an enduring element. One cannot speak of the permanence of of Jesus: the Society of Jesus, which virtually aims at casting out theatoms, matter or energy but only of the permanence of something in image of Christ from that of Christ Jesus and at presenting Jesus aloneman. This, however, can be seen only through Imagination, Inspiration as in a certain sense the tyrant of developing humanity. All this needs toand Intuition. Everything else that is not perceived supersensibly is be viewed in its true context, for the different impulses referred to heremerely fleeting. Whereas the sense-perceptible is wholly transient, the are more influential in modern life than is supposed, and very intenselysupersensible - which outlives it - can be perceived only by supersensible so. Without open eyes and a longing to understand the actual events

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around one, it is impossible not to be taken by surprise by what happens, chistically cruel like this Herr von Uexkull merely experiments witha clear view of such things as I have mentioned will be lacking. Our own killing and makes sneering remarks. That is thoroughly typical oftime is in many respects too indolent to seek to achieve clarity. The modem science; but it is not noticed, because nobody wants to admit it.concepts of spiritual science are far too hard to encompass, and are People refuse to break through the dividing wall between themselves andstigmatised as dilettante, unscientific, fantastic and the like. They are their environment; hence they cannot arrive at the ideas they really needalso, as I have indicated, condemned because of the determination to in order to learn one more how to understand their environment.take no account of what is really significant for the future. We know from spiritual science that the essential being of man,

Thus we see around us this dreary waste in the midst of the chaos the core of his being, descends from the spiritual worlds and unites itselfinto which the old religious creeds and cultural streams have descended. with what surrounds him as a bodily-material sheath between birth andWithin this chaos, which people with curious naivety call war - whereas death, or rather between conception and death. The problems of con-for some time there has been not war but something altogether different ception, of birth, of embryology, are investigated today; but they cannot- we see an array of lifeless, barren thoughts and ideas, because fertile be truly investigated, because the research is directed only to the deadones can come only from an understanding of the supersensible, the part of man, which is embedded in the living. This path will never lead tospiritual: people today have to choose between being preoccupied with a grasp of what alone can make mankind comprehensible. When awhat is dying and passing away and so becoming a pupil of Lenin, or human being descends in this way from the spiritual world, he is receivedtaking into account the supersensible, which has within it what has to by father and mother and goes through all the stages of his embry-come in the future. I am not referring simply to the Lenin who works his ©logical development. Science today assumes that the parents give themischief in Eastern Europe -1 regard him more as a symbol, for we have child existence; and since the father and mother are the centre of themany such Lenins in the whole environment of our daily life, in one family and the family is the foundation of the community, communitiesdomain or other. Yet people refuse to take in hand anything except what - which are extended families - consider the human being concernedis dying. their own property. Thus a gal l ing idea is brought into modem l i fe - but

Remember something I once pointed out here. The plant lives, 1 it really is not true.said; it can be described as a living being. But what does ordinary science What, then, does the act of conception bestow upon man? Whatdescribe as the plant? Not what lives within it, for that is supersensible; does he derive from it? As spiritual science shows, what he receives is thebut the dead, mineral part of it which fills out the living element. In possibility of becoming a mortal being, of dying. If you consider what ismodern science we find nothing described other than the mineral pad- to be found in my various books, you will see that it is the necessaryding of the living being, which brings death to it. Genuinely fruitful consequence. With conception there is implanted in man what makes hisconcepts regarding nature are consequently unattainable today. The death possible here on Earth. The whole of life from birth is aconcepts of present-day botany have no life. All that they describe is development towards death, and the seed of death is implanted atsomething filled out with a stony mineral substance which circulates conception. What a human being is as man, as a living being, is not byinside. Something similar can be descnbed in animals and m man. All any means engendered at conception; but the possibility of death isthree kingdoms become entirely different as soon as one gets away from thereby grafted on to what would otherwise be immortal. Parents canthis circulating mineral substance. give death to a child. This is putting it strongly, but they simply give

Take, for example, Herr von Uexkull, who has written an article the possibility of bearing a mortal body here on the Earth. What lives inon "The Controversy about the Animal Soul . He is possessed by that body comes from the spiritual world. This is what makes themasochistic cruelty as regards all knowledge of the soul, or anything that organism - the whole mechanism with which a human being is clothedsuggests it. I said "masochistic cruelty" because in this article he says and which was received by him with the seed of death at conception -that it is impossible to decide whether a soul exists or not, all that can be capable of life. We must leam to recognise man in his most concretedecided is that science cannot come to a conclusion about this. Anyone manifestation as a part of spiritual world-development. Then we shallwho is cruel in the ordinary way also kills; but anyone who is maso- leam not to stand before the loftiest problems with cowardly fear, as

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present-day science does, but to grasp them positively. If we shrink backfrom them, we shall fail to understand even our immediate environment.

Round about us today live the most varied peoples. Just think of jthe incorrect ideas which for example Woodrow Wilson has fashionedout of his conception of nations and peoples. We have often spoken Iabout this. One has to be quite clear that one cannot understand thisconcept of a people unless one takes in the whole of earthly evolution.Whence derives the division of humanity into peoples?

We know from spiritual science that evolution proceeded in sucha way that there was first a Saturn embodiment of the Earth, then that ofthe Sun, followed by the Moon incarnation and then the present Earthcondition; and that afterwards will come a Jupiter embodiment and soon. The course of evolution, however, was not so straightforward thatthe old Saturn body simply changed into Sun, Moon and Earth; at onetime a severance of the present Sun from the Earth took place, then aseverance of the present Moon, so that we have a continuous evolution,and something which was separated off was again united, and onceagain separated. This element of separation which I have just nowassociated with cosmic evolution entered into the old clairvoyance. Andthere was in this clairvoyance a very unconscious - or "chthonic", as itwas called in old clairvoyant days - image of what the human seed of thefuture might be in the ongoing path of earthly evolution. For whatcomes from the universe was destined to decay; it was maintained onlybecause it had come under the grip of the Luciferic power. In this way,out of the cosmos were formed the many variations in the nations andpeoples, but the cosmic forces were impregnated with Luciferic forces.Over and against these diverse peoples stands something which wasunderstood in a better time than this - universal humanity. It has atotally different origin. It may be discussed in the abstract, but can betruly spoken of only as one genuinely understands what the seed of thefuture in humanity is. It has no taint of nation or folk; for it is that whichdid not come down from the cosmos but that to which Christ came andwith which He united Himself. The Christ, unlike the Jehovah deity,united Himself with no nation but with universal humanity. He was inthe confraternity of those gods from whom the nations arose, but He leftthat realm when it was ready to pass away; He came to the Earth andtook up His abode in the whole of humanity. When we say "Not I butChrist in me", it is the greatest blasphemy against Christ Jesus to invokeHim for any need other than that of universal humanity.

Perceiving this is one of the most important insights for the

future. It is vital for the future that we perceive the relationship of ChristJesus to humanity, and also how everything purely national lies outsidethe realm of Christ Jesus, for it is the ancient residue of what was ripe forextinction at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. Yet as we see witheredfruit in the orchards, so do all things linger on after their right time. Sowe were bound to get the science which is concerned only with knowledge of what is on the way to extinction and which - whether it benatural or social science - has to do with ideas that apply only to thetransient, in nature or in cultural life.

Often in the history of civilisation one can see the conflictbetween the tendency to cling to what is passing away, and to present asimportant the dead, abstract ideas connected with it, and the wish tograsp that germinal essence of humanity which alone can engendersomething fruitful for the future. I have often referred to the significantconversation between Goethe and Schiller when they were both in Jenafor a conference of the Natural History Society, at which Batsch, thebotanist, had lectured on plants. As they left, Schiller said to Goethe:"The botanist's outlook takes everything apart; it ignores the connectinglinks". Goethe, in a few descriptive sentences, put before Schiller hispicture of the metamorphosis of plants; but the latter said: "That is notan experience but an idea". Schiller could not rise to the notion of manas one who bears the future within him, that he might then also be ableto find once again seeds for the future in the world in the form of thesupersensible. So he replied to Goethe: "That is not an experience orobservation - it is an idea". To which Goethe answered: "Then I see myideas with my very eyes". What he had been describing was visible tohim, as real as something perceptible by physical senses. They confronted one another - Schiller, representative of a mind unable to lookup to the spiritual, bemused by dead, abstract ideas; and Goethe, whowished to derive from knowledge of nature what is imperishable andvital for the future in man, in contrast to which all that is transient ismerely a semblance. He wanted to unite the transient with theimperishable. He was not understood, for he looked on the supersensible, the imperishable, as he would look upon something perceptibleto the senses. Thus the urgent need of our time is that Goethe's teachingshould be more widely developed and further elaborated in its ownsphere. Then things will become clear, and we shall see that the particular creeds, including the Jewish, or more particularly the Catholic, areonly the presuppositions of what is old and outworn, standing out inevolution as parched remnants, supported only from outside; and that

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side by side with these, interpenetrating them, stands Americanism,which wishes to carry only the transient into the future. Therein lies thekinship between Americanism and Jesuitism, of which I spoke last time.

Standing in opposition to all this is Goetheanism. By this I do notmean anything dogmatically fixed, for we have to use names for thingswhich far transcend them. By "Goetheanism" I do not mean whatGoethe thought up to 1832, but what will perhaps be thought in the nextmillennium in the spirit of Goethe, what may develop out of Goethe'sviews, ideas and sentiments. It may be concluded, therefore, that ineverything connected with Goetheanism outworn belief finds its particular enemy. The most extreme paradoxes are found in this sphere. Itreally is a paradox to find that the cleverest book about Goethe -whatever may be said to the contrary - has been written by a Jesuit,Father Baumgartner. It is a book which considers Goethe in everydetail. The usual distinguishing mark of Jesuit work on the subject ishostility to Goethe; but this is a highly intelligent, painstaking book, notsuperficially written, presenting Goethe just as he was. Whereas Goethehas been described as an ordinary citizen of the eighteenth century, bornin 1749 at Frankfurt am Main, who studied at Leipzig, was given a postin Weimar, travelled in Italy, lived to be very old and was incorrectlycalled "Johann Wolfgang Goethe"; this was how he was described in thework of a distinguished English gentleman, Lewes, which was muchadmired. A book about "Johann Wolfgang Goethe" that describes himas an ordinary eighteenth citizen is no real book. A cultural paradox liesin the Jesuit's book on Goethe, because one can see from it how theopposing forces in modern times work and where the real ones are to bef o u n d .

In a small way it shows itself amongst us. So long as we werereckoned a "hidden sect", Anthroposophy was seldom attacked; butwhen it began to spread a little, virulent attacks began, especially fromthe Jesuits. The journal Voices from Maria Laach, now called Voices ofthe Time, is not content with one article but contains a whole seriesabout what I have called Anthroposophy. I must warn you again andagain, when attacks come from this quarter, not to believe that from thepoint of view of these writers it is for our good when they say that wespeak of the Christ, or that we promote understanding of Christ. Theyforbid that very thing; it is exactly what must not be done. Outside theteaching of the Church, no-one should say anything about the Christ.People in our circles should not be so naive to believe that by being agood Christian one can become reconciled with Catholicism. Just

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because one is a good Christian and does all in one's power to advanceChristianity, one makes Catholicism one's greatest enemy. It becomesmore and more necessary to take care that naivety in these contemporary matters should disappear from amongst us. We must come torealise ever more clearly in our circles what is active in the forces aroimdus, whether they be in the ascendant or are declining. We must getbeyond the longing, present among us in so many forms, simply topenetrate a little way into an imaginative world. I have often said that wemust get beyond this longing for a world that is a little bit imaginative.We must above all be able to place our spiritual science alongsidemodern concepts, and bring keen observation to bear on life as it is inthe present age; because to gain insight into this is possible only from thestandpoint of spiritual science.

How many people come to me and say: "I have seen this or that".Well, they may indeed have done so. Imaginations are not so remotefrom human development. "Was that the Guardian of the Threshold?",many then ask. A simple "yes" or "no" does not answer questions onsuch matters, because the answers involve the whole of humandevelopment. But the answers are given. I am now correcting my OccultScience for a new edition. I see that in it everything may be found for theanswering of such questions. Every precaution, every limitation to beobserved is precisely described; the feelings to be developed, theexperiences to be undergone, are all set forth. To elaborate the wholecontent of spiritual science would have required thirty volumes. Onemust think carefully when reading this book, drawing the necessaryconclusions - and it can be done. I do not like writing thick books. But itwill be found that this book indicates clearly that anyone who isendeavouring to enter the spiritual world aspires to meet the Guardianof the Threshold; but meeting this Guardian of the Threshold is not sosimple as having a dreamy imagination. Having such an imagination isof course the most comfortable way of entering the supersensible world.The encounter with the Guardian of the Threshold is fraught withtragedy; it is a struggle for existence as regards all cognitive concepts, allcognitive laws, all man's connections with the spiritual world and withAhriman and Lucifer. This life-and-death struggle must be endured byo n e w h o w o u l d m e e t t h e G u a r d i a n o f t h e T h r e s h o l d . S h o u l d t h i s

experience come to a person merely as a dream-like imagination, itmeans that he wants to slip through comfortably so as to have a dreamof the Guardian of the Threshold as a substitute - nowadays people arefond of substitutes - for the real thing.

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We must think healthily about these matters. It will then becomeevident that healthy thinking can alone provide the basis of a remedyagainst all superstition, and against all the charges made by superficialopponents of spiritual science. Moreover, in this kind of thinking, in thisraising oneself to experiencing the spiritual, lie all the necessary seeds forfinding the real way out of the present world-catastrophe. What leadsout of it must be grasped not on the Earth, not in the sense-perceptiblerealm alone, not in the institutions which are mismanaged and aresucking the life out of what exists. What is to be grasped does not exist!We must be stirred with burning zeal for the understanding of what doesnot yet exist. But what does not yet exist can only be understoodaccording to the pattern of what can be grasped by supersensibleknowledge. It cannot be grasped by looking into the past. Such men asKautsky prefer to look back into the past, finding in anthropology theunderlying plan of humanity. They try to study conditions at a timewhen man was hardly created in order to understand the social connections of today. These true sons of a misconceived Catholicism, suchas Kautsky, want to have it so. But one cannot look back to the past,because in the past those things which have extended into the mostrecent present were created by means of atavistic forces, instinctively. Inthe future, nothing will be achieved instinctively; and if man merelyholds on to what has derived from the age of instinct, he will never attainto what bears the future within it and can lead out of this catastrophe.An active, earnest understanding of the present depends entirely upon aright attitude to the spiritual world.

I should have to say much if, continuing in this strain, I were tospeak to you about many things closely related to this present time. Yetif, in the weeks while we are separated, you will bring rightly before yoursouls what has been said in these lectures, and which should culminate inrealising the necessity for knowledge of the twofold figure of ChristJesus, you will go far this summer in meditative comprehension of thecosmic Christ and the earthly Jesus - remembering that the cosmicChrist descended from the spiritual worlds because those worlds werehenceforth to be closed to man's view, and that man must apprehendwhat lies within him as the seed of the future. In the cosmic Christ andthe earthly human Jesus, and their union, lies much of the solution to theriddle of the world - at least to the riddle of humanity. In man lies theseed of the future; but this seed must be fructified by Jesus. If it is not sofructified, it will assume an Ahrimanic form, and the Earth will end inchaos. In short, in connection with the Mystery of Christ Jesus we can

find the solution of many, many questions of today; but we mustendeavour to seek these solutions in such a way that we are not lightlycontented with what is so often taken for theosophy or mysticism or thelike, with a "union with the spiritual", an "entire absorption in the All".Rather must we really visualise the true conditions surrounding us andtry to permeate them with what we gain from spiritual science. We shallthen say to ourselves over and over again, with regard to the answers tomany questions: truly man today is seeking something very practical,not merely theoretical: he will find himself in a blind alley in which hecan go no further if he does not take up a spiritual path. Everythingwhich does not go forward with the spirit will wither away.

This is a weighty question for the future of mankind. Has man thewill to journey with the spirit? I would want to impress this on yourhearts today as the feeling which can arise from the reflections we havep u r s u e d .

We are probably meeting today for the last time in this room,which we have used so gladly for years as a place for our studies. It wasone of the first to be arranged in keeping with our own taste, and one canonly work according to the opportunities that exist. We fitted it up as wedid because we were always convinced that endeavours on behalf ofspiritual science ought not to be mere theory but should be expressed inevery aspect of our meeting as human beings. The room is now to betaken from us and we must look for another. Obviously, under presentconditions we shall not be able to fit it up as we did this room, but wemust be content with it. This room has become dear to us, for we havecome to regard it as impossible to speak elsewhere of our relations withthe spiritual as we can in this place, where in many ways we have tried todo the same things that are being attempted in Domach on a largerscale. In times gone by we had to try all sorts of arrangements. Perhapsthere are still a few here who were present when we had to speak in apub: I stood there, facing the audience, while behind me the landlord orlandlady filled beer-mugs. Another time we were in a room like a stable;we had booked another, but that was what they gave us. In other towns Ihave lectured in places with no boards on the floor, and that too had tobe put up with; but it is not exactly what could be wished for as anoutcome of our movement, and it would be a misunderstanding if it weresaid that one could just as soon speak of spiritual things in any surroundings. The spirit's task is to permeate matter and to permeate itcompletely. That is the sense in which I have been speaking of social andscientific life today.

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For all these reasons it will certainly be very hard to part in a fewweeks from this room, which was fitted up so devotedly with the help ofour anthroposophical friends; but we must look upon such a parting inthe right way, as a symbol. People will be obliged to part from much inthe course of the next few decades. They will be taken by surprise,although they do not believe it. But one thing will be deeply rooted inthose who have grasped the deepest impulse of spiritual science.Whatever may be shaken, this cannot be shaken - and that is what wehave grasped in the spirit, and what we have determined to do andaccomplish in the spirit. No matter how chaotic everything looks, thatwill show itself to be the right thing.

So may leaving this place be a symbol for us. We must move intoanother, but we carry away with us something of which we know that itis not simply our own deepest inner being, but the deepest inner being ofthe world, on which man must build if he would build aright. Whoeverstands within spiritual science is convinced that no-one can take away,either from us or from humanity, what we have accomplished through it,and that it must lead human affairs to a healthy condition; this heknows, to this he clings. We may not as yet be able to say how we shallaccomplish many things, but we may be sure that we shall accomplishthem rightly if we steep ourselves in the knowledge of what Goetheanismsignifies for spiritual science, and if on the other hand we accept whathas recently been mentioned here - that the world stigmatises anddefames all that is connected with the Central European culture of theeighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and that we, bringing all thisbefore our souls, can nevertheless take our stand on our sure convictions: whatever happens, this Central European culture will be fruitfulfor the future of mankind, which indeed depends on it. To save their ownfaces, because they have no wish for this future of mankind, the opponents of this particular culture defame it; but let us grasp it in the spirit,recognise its inner spiritual content, knowing that we can build upon it.Then we shall be sure that, though all devilish powers vow its destruction, yet it will not be destroyed! But only what is united with thegenuine spirit can escape destruction.

Special Spiritual Foundations for the Connection betweenEngland and the United States of America

Virginia Sease

At the present time when relationships between countries and continentsexperience numerous overt and covert tensions we may feel called uponto step back from the power of current public opinion in order to assesswhat is actually at stake. This will require a willingness to focus onparticular historical configurations which provided a foundation forpresent connections in an age which tends to favour a-historical evaluations. This approach is often met if not with outright resistance, then atleast with lack of interest. In this regard, resistance and lack of interestrepresent the fruits of a modern kind of agnosticism which basicallyrejects the reality of development and metamorphosis. Yet developmentand metamorphosis form the two pillars of spiritual life which thensupport the other edifices of spiritual-cognitive, artistic and socialgrowth. The results often become visible only considerably later. It isfrom this point of view that certain special relationships betweenEngland and America acquire unparalleled uniqueness.

The English Language

The most obvious supportive factor between England and America isthe common language. Interesting studies have been published illustrating the effects on the English language through its transplantation toAmerica, as well as to other countries which followed America in theirpioneer settlements such as Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.Language provides a deep level of inner and not merely outer communication possibilities and for the English language Rudolf Steinermentions how this is indeed enhanced through a special circumstancewhich is essential in view of other considerations which will follow in thisarticle. Two qualities are particularly important which Rudolf Steinerdescribed in 1916 in connection with a comparison between English,German, French and the Slavic languages as well as in 1919 in

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relat ionship to new developments in human evolut ion which wi l lmanifest first through the vehicle of the English language. In 1916 due tothe First World War Rudolf Steiner saw the necessity to awaken inspiritually striving individuals an understanding for the differencesbetween the ways in which thought and word interact in the majorlanguages. Briefly summarized here, he describes how when in speakingFrench the thought is pressed into the words, which can even lead to a"self-intoxication" through the words themselves. In German thethought does not totally permeate the word but rather the thought isheld within the thought-structure which naturally causes difficulties intranslations. In the Slavic languages the word lies at quite a distancefrom the thought whereas in English the opposite is the case in that thethought permeates through the word and finds "reality beyond thew o r d " . '

The "reality beyond the word" characterizes the second qualitywhich Rudolf Steiner describes in special detail (1919) probably becausehe could foresee the consequences of the First World War which catapulted the Anglo-American world into a prominent leadership position:

"This language of the peoples who now enter into world leadership has the characteristic property that one cannot directly expresswhat should be surveyed spiritually... This English language does nothave the possibility to express itself in such a way that what is expressedcompletely coincides with the spirit. One must be able to observe thisfact without becoming emotional, without changing it, for example, intohatred against England. Rather one has to regard it like a natural scientific fact, that just is so... But this characteristic of the future worldlanguage [1919!] is something which is extraordinarily beneficial forhumani ty. To a certa in extent nothing can be bet ter for modernhumanity than when within the people who assume world domination, alanguage is formed which cannot coincide with the spirit... In theAnglo-American language the connection of the human soul with theelement of language, as it was present in olden times, no longer lives.Indeed this language has separated itself from the human being, as alanguage it becomes abstract... This language allows the inner permeation with the quality of soul to die out. Thereby the oppositeelement, the opposite pole of the soul life is summoned forth; namely thenecessity to come to an understanding beyond language ... this isimmensely important. In the future one will not be able to come to anyunderstanding through the English language if one does not simultaneously develop something which is not in the language but signifies a

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living, immediately elementary, feeling understanding from humanbeing to human being, which only then will imbue language with life.This means, however, nothing less than the fact that the supersensiblehuman being, the first supersensible human being in the historicalexistence of humanity must enter in. Formerly people only spoke out oftheir physical bodies, this dies, it expires with the English language; itwill of course still be present but it will become ever more an abstractjingle-jangle. And human beings will have to enter socially into connection with each other through their etheric bodies so that while theyare speaking they bring forth comprehension from thought tothought... Reading thoughts [mind reading], that is a challengeextending over the next centuries ... [Speaking] will of course accompany the development of thoughts, but it will be a continual ringing outto the other person, and the actual understanding from human being tohuman being will have to arise from a much deeper soul element. Thiswill happen in the development of humanity by force in that the rulingpeople of the future, the Anglo-American people, will expunge the soulin language as such and the necessity will arise to juxtapose the 'dae-monium' [here one would substitute 'genius' in English] in the innernature of one person with the 'daemonium' in the other person."^

The implications of both these descriptions - 1916 and 1919 -place a significant responsibility upon the English-speaking peoples -primarily in England and America. We all are familiar with the wittystatement: the English and the Americans are divided by a commonlanguage! But in all seriousness it seems that in the often divisive political climate today it will be what unites both nations which will providestepping stones into a future which at best seems fraught with newvar iet ies of chaos.

England in the Seventeenth Century

In retrospect one aspect often remains in the background or at leasthardly noticeable when historical accounts appear which trace thefounding of the colony in Jamestown, Virginia in 1607 and then in 1620the landing at Plymouth Rock of those people who later were designatedas pilgrims or the Pilgrim Fathers of America. By the early 17th centuryEngland already enjoyed many centuries of exceptional spiritual-cultural history: To mention but a few highlights, we may think of thelegacy of King Arthur, and of significant developments in exoteric andesoteric Christianity such as the Mystery Plays in Medieval times. The

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cycle from York is the only remaining complete cycle encompassing 48plays but all treat the same material. People lived in the pictures of thedivine creation of the world and of humanity and with the problem of ithe conflict between good and evil which became exemplified through jthe life, death, the descent into hell to free the souls imprisoned there by iSatan, followed by the resurrection of Christ Jesus. Later adventuresome poetic works like Christopher Marlowe's "The Tragedy of DoctorFaustus" made their appearance while the common person was still iwrestling with the question of good and evil at a more basic level. We Icould increase this l ist practically ad infinitum! ]

The King James' BibleI

By the time the first English settlers after 1620 made their way to the 1New World, the impact of the King James version of the Old and the 1New Testament had already commenced. The first printing was in 161LIn the translators' dedication to King James various aspects appearwhich are prophetic in their perception of the value of the great work |i t se l f :

"For when Your Highness had once, out of deep judgment,apprehended how convenient it was, that, out of the Original sacredtongues, together with comparing of the labours, both in our own [wemay think here of the enormous accomplishment of William Tyndale 'whose translation of the New Testament from the Greek in 1526 formedthe English language in such an accessible and pictorial manner thatmuch of the King James' 'Authorized Version' rests upon Tyndale'swords] and other foreign languages, of many worthy men who wentbefore us, there should be one more exact translation of the HolyScriptures into the English tongue; Your Majesty did never desist tourge and to excite those to whom it was commended, that the Workmight be hastened..

One may venture to say that aside from personal family andfriendship ties the most universal and important link between Englandand America for at least the first century after Plymouth Rock was theKing James Holy Bible. The fact that despite the strong presence ofespecially German and to a lesser degree of French settlers in theColonies the English language ultimately prevailed as the official language may be traced back to the important role which the Scripturesplayed in early Colonial life and to the King James version of the Biblewhich accompanied the settlers as a prized possession to the New World.

Musical Heritage in America

An additional significant religious-cultural dimension which the emigrants took with them was the musical heritage of England. Todaymusicologists acknowledge that England enjoyed a very early art ofpart-singing. Scotus Erigena (810-877), famous as a theologian andphilosopher, described in full detail two-part polyphonic music and heascribed the description "organum" to it. It seems that this polyphonicmusic dating long before the developments on the Continent - such asby Leonin in France - was integral to Britain's folk music. Characteristicand unique to this polyphony is the system of intervals of thirds andsixths, often as descant. The musical development in England was by nomeans restricted to certain social classes but permeated all aspects ofsociety. One song exemplifies this most convincingly and it has continued to live into our times: "... the most remarkable musical composition of the English 13th century, indeed one might almost say ofEurope, is the isolated but splendid 'Sumer is icumen in' ... this is farand away the earliest example of six-part polyphonic writing since itseems unlikely that it was composed later than the year 1280 [probablyat Reading Abbey]. This lyrical invocation to summer is in the form of afour-part round supported by the two lower voices performing a simple,four-bar repeating figure in the bass, also in canon.""* It cannot be ourtask here to describe the vast history of musical development inEngland, but rather to recognize that the many musical experiences -both secular and sacred - which accompanied the early settlers fromEngland as a treasure in the soul realm lived also as a special language ofconnection to their homeland. One might raise the argument here thatthe early emigrants were of so-called Puritan persuasion, a movementwhich began to gain prominence under the reign of Queen Elizabeth(1558-1603) and which sought to reform the church through removingall remaining papal elements, through introducing different principles inworship along "apostolic" lines and by enhancing piety and disciplineboth in the clergy and the laity, and would be disinclined to expressthemselves through music. Rather their main focus had to be on theircovenan t w i t h God w i t h no d i s t r ac t i ons . Go rdon S . Wood sums t hesituation up succinctly: "The Puritan leaders [specifically in Boston andits environs] were not modem believers in religious freedom. Theybelieved as firmly as did the Anglicans from whom they had fled that thechurch's beliefs must be orthodox and uniform and that the state had theobligation to support the church and its beliefs. Hence they punished

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Quakers and other dissidents in their midst as harshly as the Anglicansin England had punished them." Music, however, with its melodies, jrhythms and harmonies is no respecter of outer rules and ordinances andit could never be extinguished. Therefore we are not so surprised that by ]the second half of the 18th century choral singing had become popular in jNew England, choosing primarily religious songs from English com- ]posers. By the end of the 18th century people born in America - most jnotably William Billings with his collection "The New England Psalm jSinger" - had produced many compositions of sacral vocal music which jwere printed and found a large circulation.^

The Impact of Quakerism

From a social-spiritual perspective, William Penn embodies significantearly connections between England and America. His name stands isynonymously with the state of Pennsylvania, meaning Penn's Woods |and Quakerism, the role of the Society of Friends, as the Quakers called jthemselves, exerted a significant influence in England and in America iright from its inception, and this extended through the 20th century withits banner of pacifism. In view of Rudolf Steiner's observation that jQuakerism represents "filtered Mystery teachings"® and that it belongsspecifically to the Anglo-American world we may inquire what aspectss t a n d o u t a s s i g n i fi c a n t a t i t s i n c e p t i o n . '

George Fox (1624-1691) founded the Society of Friends in 1652. iBorn in Leicestershire and trained as a shoemaker he possessed deep |religious fervour and a magnetic personality. He was known by his gazewhich at once rayed out inner ecstasy and total sovereign serenity. InHans Fantel's perceptive study, "William Penn; Apostle of Dissent", hedescribes George Fox in the context of church relationships of his time.At the basis of his teaching lay his own epiphany experience: "I hadforsaken the priests ... and the separate preachers also;... I had nothingoutwardly to help me, nor tell me what to do. Then, oh then, I heard avoice which said, 'there is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thycondition', and when I heard it my heart did leap for joy!"'® Fantel alsoperceives - without describing it as such - George Fox as a personstanding in the early centuries of the consciousness soul age: "Byabolishing the church's authority over the soul. Fox made the personalrelation to God a truly private relation .. .just this elusive factor ... gavethe Quaker movement the stamina for survival. For in privatizing therelation with God, Fox got hold of a notion that was just then beginning

to emerge as a powerful force in modem history: the concept of theindividual as a [separate] person."" Especially in the Anglo-Americanworld the sense of individuality lives very strongly and affects thedeepest core of moral-religious striving.

Rudolf Steiner's comment that Quakerism may be regarded as"filtered Mystery teachings" is indeed enigmatic. In this connotation healso mentions its sectarian evolution. What does "filtered" mean in thisconnotation? To which "Mystery teachings" must we look? Does "filtered" signify that it is a remnant that is diluted or is it a quintessence?Do we find a clue through the early Quakers' own description ofthemselves as "Children of Light"? Here a main motif which GeorgeFox variously expressed indicates an approach to these questions,namely that Christ can be revealed in every human soul and this is in noway contrary to the revelation in the Gospels. William Penn called this"the inner Christ". Out of my work connected with these questions I cansuggest as a possibility that the Mystery teaching is connected withJakob Boehme and that it is filtered in a double sense: various themesespecially in the works of George Fox and William Penn seem tocoincide intimately with qualities conveyed in the comprehensive worksof Jakob Boehme (1575-1624) whose death occurred in the year of Fox'sbirth. Secondly, it is an established fact that the translation of Boehme'sworks into English proceeded with astonishing acceleration for that timeand that they were avidly read by many adherents to Quakerism as wellas by people of other spiritual persuasions. The Quakers generally readthem either for private inspiration or during regular family worship.Today we may even have a sense of deep gratitude that these translationscirculated so early and so freely in England, as the great work of JakobBoehme could have experienced a dramatic obscuration due to the widespread devastation in Germany and the surrounding countries duringthe Thirty Years War (1618-1648). The active engagement with thesewritings in England worked as an antidote which then reflected back toCentral Europe in the 18th century.

Jakob Boehme

Of central importance in placing Jakob Boehme in connection with theMystery history of humanity which is readily established by enteringinto his voluminous writings is Rudolf Steiner's indication that he wasan initiate of the Sun who could experience the inner secrets of nature.He could blot out the sun and look into the darkness. In the darkness he

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saw things as if mirrored and his soul-eye could perceive what was inthem spiritually.' This led to his alchemical writings in which he wouldseek for the "Philosopher's Stone", the essence between the physical andetheric spheres as Rudolf Steiner describes it, which also represents thefourth step in the Rosicrucian-Christian path of initiation. Whereas theouter aspects of alchemy were not of great importance to the Quakers,the alchemy of the inner nature of the human being played a central role.One single quote selected from Boehme's immense work entitled "TheAurora, That Is, The Day Spring" can stand here for countless otherswhich were absorbed by the Quakers and other spiritual seekers soonafter it appeared in translation by John Sparrow in 1656. It is composedin seventy-seven chapters and each chapter is divided into verses.

From Chapter 12:160. "Therefore, O Child of man! have a care, trust not too muchupon worldly wisdom, it is blind, and is born blind; but when theflash of light is generated therein, then it is no more blind, buts e e t h .161. For Christ saith,' You must be born anew, or else you cannotenter into the kingdom of heaven.'162. Truly it must be generated in such a manner in the HolyGhost: which riseth up in the sweet spring or fountain-water ofthe heart, in the flash.163. Therefore hath Christ ordained or instituted the Baptism orNew Birth or Regeneration of the Holy Ghost in the water,because the birth of the light [underline V.S.] riseth up in the sweetwater in the heart.164. Which is a very great Mystery, and hath been also kept secretfrom all men since the beginning of the world till now: which itwill demonstrate and describe plainly in its due place."

William Penn's "Holy Experiment"

In 1682 William Penn as an avowed Quaker and a highly educatedOxford scholar and lawyer left England with the blessing of George Foxfor Philadelphia. His goal was to bring about a "Holy Experiment". Asboth an exceedingly practical man as well as a deeply spiritual individualhe was eminently prepared to carry out such a plan as a refuge to thepersecuted Quakers, as violence against them as well as against otherswho wished to live in peace had taken on severe dimensions. This

intention also extended to the native Indian population which quicklyperceived that William Penn was like no other white man. He was awelcome guest in their dwellings and highly respected for his fairness. Hefor his part saw that the Indians believed in "God and immortalitywithout the help of Metaphysicks".'"'

Basically the "Holy Experiment" can be seen as the attempt torealize the interpenetration of Spirit and Matter from a practical socialapplication. Penn's plan meant no less than establishing a community ofhuman beings who are connected with one another not through anyouter force but solely through moral consensus. We may regard thisstance as a harbinger to Rudolf Steiner's "Philosophy of Freedom", asonly free human beings can form a way of life including self-governanceat all levels who are free of physical, moral and institutional bondage.This quality shines through a poem by Penn from 1693 which incorporates his deeper beliefs on the immortality of the individual. Thisbelief continued long after William Penn to determine the affairs of thecolonies and deeply influenced the creation of the United States ofAmerica.

The truest end of life, is to know the Life that never ends.He that makes this his Care, will find it his Crown at last.And he that lives to live ever, never fears dying:nor can the means be terrible to himthat heartily believes the end.For though Death be a Dark passage, it leads to Immortality,And that's Recompence enough for Suffering of it.And yet Faith lights us even through the Grave,being Evidence of Things not seen.And this is the Comfort of the Good,that the Grave cannot hold them,and that they live as soon as they die.For Death is no morethan a turning of us over from time to eternity.Death, then, being the way and condition of Life,we cannot love to live,if we cannot bear to die.

They that love beyond the World, cannot be separated by it.Death cannot ki l l what never dies.Nor can Spirits ever be divided

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that love and live in the same Divine Principle,the Root and Record of their Friendship.If Absence be not Death, neither is theirs.

Death is but Crossing the World, as Friends do the Seas;they live in one another still.For they must needs be present,that love and live in that which is Omnipresent.In this Divine Glass, they see Face to Face;and their Converse is Free, as well as Pure.

Wi l l i am Penn

Incarnat ion St reams

Thus far in our considerations we have focused on the connectionsstreaming from England to the New World in the 17th century and howthese connections formed significant aspects for a spiritual adaptation inthe new circumstances. By the 18th century significant personalitiesappeared on the world scene who were born in America and theyestablished relationships to England which became decisive on variousfronts. As an exemplary figure Benjamin Franklin stands out as a specialphenomenon. His date of birth in 1706 places him only one century afterthe first group of settlers in Jamestown (1607) and but eight decadesfrom the landing at Plymouth Rock. Before we take up one major aspectin regard to Benjamin Franklin it can be helpful to summarize RudolfSteiner's insights into places and time periods of the previous incarnation of certain groups of people. This provides a background especially when we confront the obvious question: how could it happen thatso many outstanding individualities began to incarnate almost immediately after the early emigrants in the New World? This questioncontains many puzzling dimensions when we realize how many centuriesof earthly time are necessary when a person is living between death and anext incarnation even to arrange with the help of the spiritual world thegenerational hereditary stream which he or she requires in order to havethe appropriate basis for the karma connected with a new life on thee a r t h .

When Europeans first came to North America they encounteredthe indigenous peoples designated then as Indians. In a lecture dealingwith great incarnation streams' Rudolf Steiner stresses that it would betotally incorrect to look down upon the First Peoples, the American

Indians, as barbarians. Rather we should respect the fact that they hadstrong pantheistic views and revered a Great Spirit, namely the Tao ofthe Orient, who presided in all evolving life. They possessed a deep faithin this all-pervading Great Spirit and due to this intensive feeling, thesesouls had only a short time in the spiritual world between death and theirnext incarnation. The fact that they were annihilated by the Europeanshad a powerful effect upon them after death. They began to plan theirnext incarnation which also necessitated arranging bloodline. Thebloodline extended back to the European Middle Ages and these soulsbegan then to incarnate in the 19th and 20th centuries in Europe. Thissignifies that for a major portion of the European population extendingover to Russia the bodily configuration is European but the souls livedin their previous incarnation in the various American Indian peoples.These former American Indian souls living now in a European contextand absorbing European education experience now a first encounter insome manner with Christianity. They mix in social life with anothergroup of souls who are, however, in the minority.

This second group of Europeans as of the 19th century andsomewhat before already had an incarnation in the earlier Christiancenturies in Europe. These souls then brought with them into their newincarnation a strong I-consciousness together with a selflessness forChristianity. It is from this group that significant friendships arosebetween Europeans and certain Americans as of the 18th century - suchns Ralph Waldo Emerson and Herman Grimm - however this Americanstream is significantly smaller than the bulk of the North Americanpopulation which we will regard first.

The majority of people born in North America, whose bloodlinealso extends back for some generations in North America - and I believethat this comprises both white and black ethnic backgrounds as does theafore-mentioned smaller stream - were living at the time just before, orduring, or after the Mystery of Golgatha in the Near East. They,however, took on nothing from this great event. Whereas they experienced and indeed formed highly spiritual cultures, they generally disregarded and disdained the physical world. These souls sojourned for along time in the spiritual world and as of the 19th century they began toincarnate in North America. Rudolf Steiner describes how these soulsexperience difficulties in entering properly into their physical bodies andtherefore they relate to their bodies more from the outside towards theinside. This leads to a basically external, extroverted view of life which isnecessary since the soul was accustomed to being in the supersensible

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sphere and needs assistance in establishing a proper relationship with thebody. This is their first Christian incarnation which they enter intobasically through outer tradition and education.

As mentioned above there is the much smaller stream of individualities who have chosen North America as their place of incarnation. From Rudolf Steiner's explicit descriptions of the two pastincarnations of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)'^ it is clear that thissmaller group had a significant and strong Christian incarnation in theMiddle Ages in Central Europe which in this connotation may alsoinclude England. Their destiny then leads them to the New World for thetasks which they need to assume for the progress and development ofm o d e r n c i v i l i z a t i o n .

Benjamin Franklin

In view of the basic theme of this contribution and in the light of ourpresent spiritual, social and political world situation it would be possibleto investigate the legacy of numerous Americans from the 18th and 19thcenturies with paramount examples culminating in Benjamin Franklinand Ralph Waldo Emerson. As a consideration of both would exceedthe limitations provided here, I will focus on Benjamin Franklin as abasic inspirer of impulses which resulted in the formation of the UnitedStates of America.

Benjamin Franklin gives us excellent insights into his life up to thefifty-first year in his "Autobiography". He was born in Boston andlearned there the trade of printer, however, he was from earliest youth anavid student of many disciplines. When he was 17 years old he leftBoston and came via New York City to Philadelphia'^. The spiritualatmosphere in Philadelphia was imbued not only with qualities arisingfrom Quakerism but also of equal importance with the aura of esotericRosicrucianism transported by German emigrants such as JohannesKelpius and his community and a bit later by Conrad Beissel' .

The trinitarian principle which the early Rosicrucians experienced as fundamental to all life and which Christian Rosenkreutz in hislong life — 1378 to 1484 — expressed in words whose signature is: EDN(From God we are Born), ICM (In Christ we die); Per spiritum sanctumreviviscimus (In the Holy Spirit we resurrect):

Ex Deo Nascimur — In Christo Morimur —Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus

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was fundamental for Benjamin Franklin's philosophy of lifesimultaneously was his uniquely personal religion. The impulses w cinitially arose through Rosicrucianism in the Middle Ages and continued in the next centuries lived on in the development of Freemasonryas of the 18th century. In this context Benjamin Franklin playe aunique role which then became the keystone for the emergence o t eUnited States of America. At the age of 18 Benjanun Franklin in scapacity as a printer sailed to England and landed there on ChnstmasEve 1724. It was the London of Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope anDaniel Defoe to mention just a few distinguished people who contributed to a highly defined social structure. The young Frankhn metmany people from various walks of life and also met the institution oFreemasonry which became a determining factor in his life.

The Influence of Freemasonry

The history of Freemasonry still provides many interpretations as wellas disputes concerning its age and its place of origin. Due to manylegends and traditions it is often still difficult to distinguish what isauthentic from fanciful conjecture. Today there is general agreementthat the craft guilds of the British Isles and especially of England diuingthe latter part of the Middle Ages formed the basis for Freemasonry.They were associations of operative stonemasons which "... not onlyprovided for the better regulation of their members and ensured theperpetuation of a high degree of technical skill, but also offered a senseof comradeship and mutual support. Trade secrets were passed onamong the most highly skilled members ... by word of the mouth." Avery significant moment in the history of English Freemasonry began in1717 when Dr. James Anderson (1684-1739) and Dr. John TheophilusDesaguliers (1683-1743) who were both members of the Presbyterianclergy as well as the Royal Society realized that by giving a more definedform to Freemasonry a vessel could be created which could beneficiallyfurther a symbiosis of religious precepts and ideals nascent in theEnlightenment with developments emerging from the scientific revolution. On June 24, 1717 - the Day of St. John the Baptist - the GrandLodge of England was established and a Grand Master chosen. In 1723James Anderson published "The Constitutions of the Free-MasonsContaining the History, Charges, Regulations etc. of that most Ancientand Right Worshipful Fraternity. For the Use of the Lodges." Thispublication caused quite a stir in London which of course interested the

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young Benjamin Franklin, who investigated all aspects of London lifewith enormous verve and penetration. Several years after Franklin ireturned to America he established the "Pennsylvania Gazette" and as |editor announced in December 1730: "As there are several Lodges of iFree-Masons erected in this Province, and People have lately been much Iamus'd with Conjectures concerning them; we think the following 1account of Free-Masonry from London will not be unacceptable to our |Readers." ® Soon thereafter Benjamin Franklin, then 25 years old,became a Freemason and quickly rose to positions of responsibility. In1734 he published the first Freemasonry book in North America, the"Constitutions" by Anderson, In the same year he was the Provincial iGrand-Master, the highest post in the brotherhood. These few but sig- 'nificant details may indicate that, despite the difficulties which arosepolitically as the Colonies strove to achieve their own identity whicheventually led to the War of Independence, as it is called in the United |States or the American Revolution, its English description, and to theDeclaration of Independence", nevertheless deeply spiritual and social

connections between people on both sides of the Atlantic were at work.These connections formed a fabric which long outlived the war. Thephilosophical-religious insights in the Declaration were and are universal in nature as they spring not merely from political dissention but jfrom the deepest source of humanity and express a task for civilizationnow and in coming ages. But this task and these insights cannot andshould not be superimposed upon other peoples which would be a grosscontradiction of their very source of freedom. Of the 56 signers of theDeclaration 53 were Freemasons and the echo of trinitarian sensibility - !wisdom, beauty, strength - sounds through the formulation. The well-known words are:

IVe hold these truths to be self-evident:that all men are createde q u a l ; | ithat they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienablerights;that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness...

Who would ever dare to assert that these truths have ever been effectuated by the United States or by any other nation even to a small degreein the two centuries since their inception? Are they not an example ofhow the thought permeates through the word and finds "reality beyondthe word"? ' But this very quality frees them from the bondage of timeand place so that they become mutual possessions for every nation but

especially for the two English-speaking nations who each in its ownhistorical role was responsible for their inception. The separation 230years ago could not establish a lasting abyss between England and theUnited States of America because their mutual foundations would notpermit this to occur.

The World Situation Today

If we now change our focus and look at the current world situation mwhich together both countries receive much praise and even more condemnation from within and without their own boundaries we are metwith gigantic complexities. Only after considerable time has elapsed willa retrospect perhaps reveal the really essential factors and distinguishthem from irrelevancies. One prominent factor, however, can exert adeletorious effect for decades to come and that is the anti-American /anti-Anglo hatred which has been ignited in many places around theworld. To what degree the hatred is justified future generations willdecide, but its effect results in a seduction away from the values whichthe West has tried - most assuredly insufficiently and imperfectly - torealize in regard to the sanctity of each individual human being, to thesense that the Divine, indeed the Christ, dwells in every person.

Rudolf Steiner has called the fifth Post-atlantean Age extendingfrom 1413 to 3573 A.D. the Anglo-American-Germanic Age - Germanic refering to Central European not only to Germany. It it the agewhich has the task of gaining an ever deeper understanding as well aspersonal experience of the Christ Being in His present situation 2,000years after the Mystery of Golgatha. Now He waits for human beings,not physically on the earth, but in the surrounding ether sphere of theearth. It is the same sphere that we live in unconsciously when we readthe thoughts of others, when the words do not fully convey theirmeaning. The more consciously we can enter this sphere, the greater ourcontribution will be to lead ourselves and perhaps others out of theabyss of submaterialistic life to the realm where the boundaries betweennations, social structures and religious persuasions dissolve as theindividual realizes that his I is in total identification with the Christ, withthe I Am as is each human I. The few examples described briefly in thisarticle seem to me to be fundamental in this regard and to underline theinherent spiritual relationship between England and the United States ofAmerica which must be further nurtured despite the efforts from variouscomers to usurp the spiritual connection for militaristic aims and to sow

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seeds of dissension where harmony should and can prevail. Yet here ourresponsibility extends far beyond even such a desirable harmony if wetake the following words seriously: .. even as the human being mustwrest himself out of materialism to attain freedom and spirituality, somust he wrest himself out of everything nationalistic in whatsoever formit may appear to attain universal humaness. Without this there can be noprogress."^^

References

1 See Rudolf Steiner, Lecture of December 18, 1916 in Dornach, CollectedWorks (OA) 173, Dornach 1978.

2 Rudolf Steiner, Lecture of July 13, 1919 in Stuttgart, Collected Works 192,Dornach 1964. pp. 287-291 (transl. V.S.).

3 The Holy Bible Containing the Old and New Testaments. Translated out ofthe original tongues and with the former translations diligently comparedand revised By His Majesty's Special Command, London and New York.1957, The Dedication.

4 Larousse Encyclopedia of Music, New York 1981, pp. 140-141.5 Gordon S. Wood, Founding a Nation 986-1787, in The Almanac of

American History, ed. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., New York 1993, p. 17.6 See Michael Winship, "Reflections on Early Sacred Music of New

England" in The Riddle of America, ed. John Wulsin, Fair Oaks, California2 0 0 1 .

7 See Virginia Sease and Manfred Schmidt-Brabant, Paths of the ChristianMysteries: From Compostela to the New World, Forest Row 2003, Chapter

8 Rudolf Steiner, Lecture of December 15, 1919 in Dornach, Collected Works194, Dornach 1994, p. 230.

9 See Rudolf Steiner, Lecture of June 14, 1921 in Stuttgart, Collected Works342, Dornach 1993,

10 Hans Fantel, William Penn: Apostle of Dissent, New York 1974, p. 81.11 Ibid. p. 84.12 See Rudolf Steiner, Lecture of September 15, 1923 in Stuttgart, Collected

Works 228, Dornach 2002.13 Jacob Boehme, Aurora, That Is The Day-Spring, transl. by John Sparrow

and ed. by C.J. Barker and D.S. Hehner. Number 389 of a Special LimitedEdition of One Thousand Hand Numbered Copies, Sure Fire Press,Edmonds, Wa. 1992, p. 306-307.

14 Cited in Hans Fantel, fn. 10, p. 189.15 See Rudolf Steiner, Lecture of December 12, 1920 in Bern, Collected Works

202, Dornach 1980.

16 See Rudolf Steiner, Lecture of April 23, 1924 in Dornach, Collected Works236, Dornach 1977.

17 See fn. 7, p. 184 f.18 Ibid., Chapter 11.19 Wayne A. Huss, The Master Builders: A History of the Grand Lodge of

Free and Accepted Masons of Pennsylvania. Volume I: 1731-1873, Philadelphia 1986, p. 1.

20 Ibid. p. 17.2 1 S e e f n . 1 .22 Rudolf Steiner, Lecture of October 23, 1919 in Dornach, Collected Works

191, Dornach 1983, p. 191 (transl. V.S.).

Shadows of Doubt

Terry Goodfellow

Those of us who live in what is generally referred to as the WesternWorld, even though geographically it may include areas of the globewhich are not in the West at all, live in a uniquely favoured time. Weenjoy freedoms and personal comforts which would have been unimaginable for our relatively recent forebears: travel is easy and cheap,disease and hunger no longer stalk the land, we can buy food from allover the world in any supermarket and we no longer suffer from cold.

In many other parts of the world, and in Africa in particular, thisis not so. There, millions of people are undernourished, have no accessto clean drinking water and live in societies which are ravaged byinternecine war.

A visitor from Mars might find this state of affairs rather strange.Indeed, he or she might conclude that different species of Homo Sapiensinhabited different parts of the earth, a conclusion which, incidentally,was favoured by some of our nineteenth century predecessors. Thisnotional visitor might also have noticed that the dominant creed of theWestern World was Christianity, a creed which enjoined people to lovetheir neighbours and to consider all people equal in the eye of God. Soour visitor might reasonably ask: What went wrong?

Dispensing with our notional visitor, we can see that to ask such aquestion is to assume that such a situation is wrong in the first place. Wecould argue, borrowing from the ideas of social Darwinianism, KarlMarx and others, that this state of affairs is the inevitable result of anevolutionary process, the impersonal advance of historical events.Alternatively, we could argue that we live in a world of our own creating;it is not a world which has been shaped by blind historical forces, butone which has been created by a myriad human decisions over longaeons of time. And the fact that we can observe this world in the waythat we do now is in itself the outcome of a long process of innerdevelopment.

As any student of Rudolf Steiner's work will know, he referred to

L

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our epoch as the fifth post Atlantean epoch, an epoch which, amongstother things, would see the development of the consciousness soul inhumanity at the beginning of the fifteenth century. One of the distinguishing features of the consciousness soul is the gradual developmentby humanity of a way of seeing and experiencing the world, or nature, aswe would now say, which is quite different to the way in which earlierhumans saw and experienced their world. It is sometimes referred to as a"spectator consciousness" in which we view the world as "out there",separated from us and getting on with its own affairs, matters in whichwe have no part. Its corollary is that we become more aware of ourselvesas individuals, as someone with a distinct identity. Earlier epochs did notperceive their world in this way; for them, the world and nature was partof a whole sea of being in which they also swam with the forces andspiritual powers which inhabited it.

It is not co-incidental that the development of this spectatorconsciousness led also in time to the perceptions which have made theworld in which we find ourselves, and which continue to dominate ourperception of it to this day. For once the earth is perceived as something"out there" and independent of ourselves, its can also be perceived assomething which can be investigated and exploited. From this perception, many, many developments flow. Of these, I propose briefly tohighlight three: The development of science and technology, the rise ofmaterialism, and the appearance and strengthening of nationalism.

Science and Technology

The Royal Society, doyen of the scientific world, was founded in 1660,although its actual origin precedes its official foundation and lies in an"invisible college" of natural philosophers who began meeting in themid-1640s to discuss the ideas of Francis Bacon. At its official foundation, it was described as "a Colledge for the Promoting of Physico-Mathematicall Experimentall Learning", and its founding groupincluded Sir Christopher Wren and Robert Boyle. It would be temptingto say that the rest is history; but this will not quite do. We can observethat the informal group of natural philosophers were meeting to discussthe ideas of Francis Bacon (1561-1626) whose active life reached intothe previous century, and that the origins of natural science itself reachback through the Arabic world to ancient Greece. But the founding ofthe Royal Society marks a step change: one could almost say that theinvestigation of the material world had come of age and that from now

on the earth was doomed to be dissected. As investigation of the naturalworld proceeded apace, so too did the development and refinement oftechnology. The industrial revolution of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century marked another step change in this accelerating process,as did the investigation of the atomic and sub-atomic world in thetwentieth century. Technology, of one sort or another, is now so much apart of to-day's world, that we take it for granted. We don't usuallythink of Michael Faraday's work when we switch on the light: we acceptelectricity as a given, as we do the myriad other pieces of technology onwhich we rely. In fact, our world is now so complex and inter-related,technologically speaking, that the failure of one part, could seriouslyimbalance the rest. But this is not something which we think aboutmuch, thanks to a spectator consciousness which perceives such thingsas out there", and entirely separate from ourselves.

M a t e r i a l i s m

The growth and expansion of science and technology was accompaniedand paralleled by a rising materialism. Materialism has differentmeanings. Philosophically, it holds that physical matter is the onlyreality and that everything can be explained in terms of matter andphysical phenomena. More generally, it denotes that physical well-beingand worldly possessions constitute the greatest good . Whilst science wasdeveloping knowledge of the physical world, and a technology whichcould make use of that knowledge, that materialism which saw thegreatest good in the acquisition of possessions, both personal andpublic, was symbolised, in the West, and in Great Britain in particular,by an expanding and accelerating shift from an agricultural to anindustrial society. Britain, with its long tradition of trade, used thiswealth and expertise to acquire yet more possessions, in the form of anempire, which at its apogee, "owned" about a quarter of the globe. It iseasy to forget how recent this empire was: it was only in the aftermath ofthe Second World War, following the establishment of Indian independence, that Britain, bankrupted by two world wars, ceded hercolonial possessions. The Suez crisis of 1956 was one of the more visiblesigns of a dwindling imperium. Yet the effects of colonialism are farfrom spent and it is difficult to understand the contemporary situationof many countries without reference to their colonial past. Nor is theurge to empire diminished either, although the nature of that empiremay be different. Much is written now about the new "American

6 8 C H A R T I N G T H E V O I D S H A D O W S O F D O U B T 69

Imperium" and it is well established that the dominant world role whichBritain enjoyed before the Second World War was ceded to America atthe end of it. But this is a different sort of empire. It has less to do withruling subject peoples, and more to do with spreading a particular brandof culture and commercial opportunity. The current situation in Iraq is apossible example of this new type of empire in action, where the intention is to establish a free market economy, where much of the recon- !struction work is to be carried out by American contractors, and wherethe culture of democracy is to be the method of government. In much thesame way that the British justified their colonial acquisitions byemphasising their mission of bringing civilisation to various of theirsubjects, so too does the new "Pax Americana" claim to be bringingfreedom to a benighted region of the globe. In fact from a certain perspective, and remembering that the boundaries of present day Iraq wereestablished in the 1920's by the British, it is possible to see the wholeaffair of Iraq as another colonial adventure.

N a t i o n a l i s m

It is generally agreed that the principle of the sovereignty of nationstates was first formally established at the Treaty of Westphalia in1646, which concluded the Thirty Years War in Europe. This principlehas been the backbone of international law ever since. As the powerof the church, religion and dynastic rulers declined, so too did theidea of nationalism - an idea which would have been unknown to former generations - begin to take root. It was an idea which was greatlyassisted by the development of the printed word, and by the decline ofthe official language of Latin in Europe in favour of the vernacular.Burgeoning nation states, and ailing dynasties alike were quick to harness this nationalism to their own ends. And whilst there are now noroyal dynasties left which wield their former power and influence, it isnevertheless surprising to learn that in 1914 dynastic states made upthe majority of the world system of governance. Most nationalanthems celebrate, in one way or another, the glory of their country.For example: "Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us anation" (U.S.A.) or "Amour sacre de la Patrie" (France), and in Britain until 1946, the ruling monarch was described on our coinage as jEmperor or Empress of India. A more recent example of the way in jwhich nationalism can be used to re-enforce a particular point of view jwas the way in which , during the build up to the invasion of Iraq in |

2003, the French were described in America as "cheese eating monkeys" and "French Fries" were renamed "Freedom Fries".

The writer Benedict Anderson has described the nation as "animagined political community - and imagined as both inherently limitedand sovereign"' We might reasonably ask how a community can beimagined. But on reflection we soon realise that most communities areessentially imagined since we can never know or meet all of the peoplewho compose them.Yet although we may never meet nor hear of all themembers of our community, even so, in the minds of each of us lives theimage of that "communion". And it is a powerful image which, as anystudent of history will know, has been, and is, manipulated to harnesspopular support for any manner of national adventures. Because thenation and nationalism come to be seen as something that always was, agiven of our lives like the weather or the sea, they also come to be seen assomething which is neutral; something which does not represent theinterest of a particular group of people, as for example the road buildinglobby. In this sense it is perceived as "interestless". But its very neutrality can make it a powerful lever in the hands of ruling elites who mayhave specific agendas. How else to explain the millions who havesacrificed their lives in the name of their country?

W Y S I W Y G

Surveying our contemporary world, we can also note its inter-connectedness. Of course the world has always been interconnected to acertain extent through trade and the effects of various empires. Butmodern advances in communications technology now enable us tocommunicate with others anywhere, which is why we now often hear thephrase "the global village". Yet beneath the surface of this homelyphrase, the same powerful forces are still at work, which is why, amongstother things, as mentioned in the opening paragraphs of this article,millions of people are starving in Africa, and why the imbalance betweenthe world's richest and poorest continues to grow.

But there are signs that its foundations are not that secure. Theyare threatened by global warming and climate change; by the incipientend to unlimited supplies of oil; by terrorism, which is in itself partly aproduct of the dominant western culture. It is not at all clear how the

' Imagined Communities - Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Verso1991.

i

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future will proceed; for this culture has the seeds of self destructionwithin it. The story of the development of oil can be seen as symptomaticof this. From the early beginnings of its first discovery and commercialexploitation in the 1860's, it has become the principal fuel of ourindustrial and technological societies. In the course of its development ithas brought great benefits as well as great destruction. Before too long,this ready supply of oil will "peak". We shall have reached the maximumvolume of supply, after which, that supply will start to decline. Expertsargue about how soon this will be-estimates vary between 10-40 years-but few dispute that this supply is finite. And few now dispute that theburning of fossil fuels, in particular oil, is the principal cause of globalwarming.

In computer terminology, the acronym WYSIWIG stands for"what you see is what you get" - in this case, what you see on the screenis what will be printed on the page. Returning to the remarks about theconsciousness soul, mentioned earlier, we can see that our civilisation isthe result come of that spectator consciousness which was one of itsoutcomes. And although there are signs that the dominant culture isbeing challenged, by the anti-globalisation movement or the environmental movement for example, it is still the dominant culture andalthough one could also argue, as Rudolf Steiner frequently did, thatany trend will arouse its opposite, nevertheless, that opposition is inmany ways using the same materialistic paradigms as the culture it isopposing.

We know from Rudolf Steiner's "Philosophy of Freedom" andfrom Owen Barfield's elegant elaboration of some of the central insightsof that book, that what we see, or perceive, is largely determined by whatconcepts we bring to bear on a given object - the "unrepresented" asBarfield calls it. We know also that it is possible to perceive phenomenain different ways, and that it is also possible to construct different andeffective technologies from such perceptions. So if we ask why is theworld as it is, we have to conclude that this is the world that we havec r e a t e d .

As students of Rudolf Steiner's work, we know that he hoped tobring concepts which would change our perceptions. The consciousnesssoul should be able to grasp not only the world "out there", but theinner world and the world of spiritual beings and forces which lie behindit. From this perception, quite different practical arrangements flow.

^Saving the Appearances - Owen Barfield. Harcourt, Brace and World, inc. 1975.

Studying these, both in his thinking and in actuality where they havetaken root in our societies, in biodynamic farms, Waldorf Schools,curative and medical centres for example, one can come to a very different picture.

In Steiner's time, those forces that dominate our world were alsoactive. He could see that the driving forces behind the materialism of thecommercial world were essentially so arranged to benefit the few; thatscience and technology was delving deeper and deeper into what hecalled "sub-nature", without any corresponding understanding of thespiritual world, and that nationalism was a scourge which should be"eradicated". In his words: "The one and only reality befitting thepresent age would be to overcome and eradicate nationalism, and for thepeople to be stirred by the impulse of the universally human.

Returning now to our putative visitor from Mars, or to someoneof a future epoch, what would they make of our present civilisation,assuming, of course, that it still existed? For this in itself is not a foregone conclusion, since, as has been already noted, our civilisation isinherently unstable and is based on premises that are inherently self-destructive. These self-destructive tendencies have been amply demonstrated in the history of two world wars in the twentieth century, and inthe violent beginnings of the 21st century. So it is not surprising that thefuture president of The Royal Society, Sir Martin Rees, is pessimisticabout our future. According to him, humanity has a 50:50 chance ofsurviving the 21st century, and that nuclear war, biological terrorism,ecological mayhem or asteroid collisions could destroy us in less than100 years. Rudolf Steiner was pessimistic about the future too. Forunless our civilisation was able to incorporate awareness of spiritualrealities into its materialistic paradigms, a reality which, in the era of theconsciousness soul it was capable of apprehending, it too was doomed todestruction in an Armageddon which he called "the war of all againsta l l " .

Our visitors might note all this. They would see a civilisation thatwas predominantly driven by a materialistic and mechanistic view of theworld and humanity. They might also note signs of a growing awarenessof the possibilities of a different sort of civilisation in the activity of theUnited Nations, the ecological movement, the European Union, and agrowing awareness in some sectors of society of the destructive and

^ Rudolf Steiner: Festivals and their Meaning, lecture of 3rd April 1920. Rudolf SteinerPress 1996 .

7 2 C H A R T I N G T H E V O I D73

inhuman tendencies at work in our world. Even so, I think they wouldprobably agree with the third god in Brecht's play "The Good Person ofSzechwan" when he says: "There must, there must, there has to be away, to help good men arrive at happy ends".

Such an outcome though, does require a different picture of thenature of the human being. Are we mere stuff, which is governed andorganised in accordance with materialistic and mechanistic principles, orare we, to borrow Shakespeare's phrase, "such stuff as dreams are madeof, with body, soul and spirit and a foot in the spiritual world? For it isonly from this picture of the human being that the possibility of acivilisation based on "the universally human" might arise.

T r u e C o l u m b i a

Pondering the special relationship between Britaina n d t h e U S A

Christopher Houghton Budd

With the passing of the Treaty of Versailles in 1918, Rudolf Steinermade the following observation: "Anglo-Americanism is destined forworld dominion ... [but] will there be found ... a sufficiently greatnumber of people who feel the responsibility, so that onto this external,materialistic dominion ... may be transplanted the impulses of thespiritual life? [Pjeople need to realise that way down at the bottom, onthe ground I might say, crawls the economic life managed by Anglo-American habits of thought. It will be able to climb up only when itworks in harmony with the whole world, with that for which others alsoare qualified and for which others also are gifted. Otherwise the gainingof world dominion will become fatal... If the effort is not made to bringabout the permeation of economic life by the independent spiritual lifeand the independent political life ... [Anglo-American dominion] willpour out cultural death and cultural illness over the whole earth."'

Events since appear to have borne Steiner out. Today there is anunseemly assertion on the part of the Anglo-American peoples (or rathersome powerful sections within their communities) that they have boththe right and, worse, the moral duty to tell the world how to behave. Inthis connection, much is made of the "special relationship" betweenBritain and the United States of America (USA).

Sail on, O Ship of State!Sail on, O Union ... strong and great!Humanity with all its fears.With all the hopes of... future years.Is hanging breathless on thy fate!

' The Mysteries of Light. Space and of the Earth, 15.12.1919.

7 4 C H A R T I N G T H E V O I D T R U E C O L U M B I A 7 5

Thus, citing Longfellow, did President Roosevelt herald the relationshipwhen he met Winston Churchill secretly at Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, in August 1941. Secretly, because the USA was not at war andbecause exception would have been taken by the substantial German-speaking part of her population. The special relationship underlies mostof post WW2 Anglo-American dominated arrangements - NATO, theIMF, World Bank and WTO, and even the UN. In addition, it refers tothe often-close human ties between the US president and the Britishprime minister, not to mention the alignment of business and economicphilosophy between Britain and the US.

The belief - and reactions to it - that the Anglo-Saxon peoplesshould run the world is behind most of today's events. If not as convenient shorthand for a geopolitical strategy to make the world subservient to Anglo-American dominion and as justification for "a newkind of imperialism," how else can we understand the specialrelationship?

One way is to respond politically - that is, to see it as conscious,even malign intent on the part of particular human beings. But thesepeople have then to be identified, the case against them proved, andanother way of "doing business" instituted instead. And all without thenew people falling prey to power and the other pitfalls that await humanbeings in this area.

The approach taken here is different. As a way of lifting oneselfabove the level of mere politics, it shares a spiritual image of howotherwise things might have been or could become - what historians callcounterfactual methodology. It aims to be symptomatological in itsunderstanding of history in order better to understand the deeper issuesa t w o r k .

The image has two important aspects. It first questions whetherColumbia is not a "truer" name for America, meaning the area nowcalled the USA. It then wonders what really is Columbia and what is itstrue extent. The aim is not to explain today's events, so much as to shiftone s point of observation to one that rings inwardly more true. Theassumption is made that history proceeds from spiritual events, notpolitical ones, and that spiritual events are susceptible to change for theIn March 2002, in a controversial pamphlet entitled Reordering the World, Robert

Cooper, a key advisor of Tony Blair, spoke of "a new kind of imperialism" as a key policyin a world in which the efficient and well-governed export stability and liberty."In the sense that Rudolf Steiner spoke of history as symptomatology. See From Symptom

to Reality in Modern History, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1976.

good if only human beings can locate themselves within them andbecome representative of them.

Although the western hemisphere is named after Amerigo Vespucci, the "discovery" of the area now occupied by the USA andCanada is generally attributed to Christopher Columbus.'^ To thisday, many places in the US bear his name - Columbus, Ohio, and theDistrict of Columbia being two obvious examples. But Canada'sBritish Columbia should also be mentioned. Indeed, in this domainone has to proceed very carefully. In much the same way that theEuropean Union is lazily and inaccurately referred to as Europe, sothe USA is of ten referred to as "Amer ica". South of the USA,America is referred to as North America, of course, but even this is agreat inaccuracy, for Canada and the USA as they are understoodtoday can hardly be read as one place. Canada should not be subsumed within the USA. Not only are their histories very different, butCanada is also characterised by the (still debated) relationshipbetween her English and French speakers.

Moreover, much of the population of the USA is Spanishspeaking or of African descent and holds different values to those of itsAnglo-Saxon fellow citizens. And before them, of course, are thepeoples, today called the First Nations, who lived in this part of theworld before the "white" man arrived. Finally, in Britain also the term"Anglo" by no means embraces all who live there. When we speak of aspecial relationship between the Anglo-American peoples, therefore, weneed to be precise in what we mean.

In fact, both the USA and Britain (or the UK, as "Americans"prefer to call it) can be understood as concepts distinct from the manypeoples who make up their populations. In the case of the USA, theinhabitants may share an over-arching "American Dream", but howreal is this dream and is it really universally held as an ideal? Suffice it tosay that political terminology is inapt when it comes to "capturing"According to the Houston scholar, John Lienhard, the reason for choosing America is as

follows. Vespucci, like Columbus, was an Italian navigator. He sailed twice to the westernhemisphere, in 1499 and 1502 - that is, 7 years after Columbus - but to the southern part.On his second trip he realised he was not in India, but in a "new" continent. A few yearslater, Vespucci gave his name to the new world through the fact that an amateur Germangeographer, Waldseemuller, wrote an introduction to a cosmology in which he saw "noreason why anyone should object to calling ... America after Amerigo Vespucci."Waldseemuller was thinking of the southern continent, but America became the name forboth North and South. Columbus found the new world, therefore, but Vespucci recognisedit was new.

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spiritual or folk soul phenomena. We must look deeper (or is thathigher?) to match inner history, to see what underlies outer events.

*

I have iterated these considerations in order to challenge the bias thatinevitably inhabits an Anglo-Saxon mind, such as mine. As self-conscious beings we all too often forget to observe ourselves properly,thinking that we are somehow the norm and thus representative of whatothers should aspire to. As a consequence, we readily assume Anglo-centrality in all we say and do.

In Rudolf Steineris terms, the English-speaking peoples, to useanother way of referring to the Anglo-Americans, can be understood asbearers of the consciousness soul. They are not alone in this, of course, butthey are especially challenged by it. For as much as the consciousness soulcarries a universally human element within it, one should be wary ofthinking that bearers of this soul are synonymous with it. There is muchdross alongside the consciousness soul. Assumptions of superiority -from which world dominion "naturally" proceeds - belong to that dross.

As if an aid to guard against this circumstance, a genre exists thatenvisages a world in which "ideal" social conditions obtain. Generallyreferred to as Utopias, they include Plato's Republic, Thomas More'sUtopia, William Morris's News from Nowhere, and Rene Daumal'sMount Analogue. One can debate the ideals such works portray, butinsofar as Utopian language is not about what is, but about what couldor should be, this literary device has the potential to serve as an antidoteto the ever-present temptation of supremacism that seems to accompanythe consciousness soul. How so? Because thereby we can make an imageto ourselves of what lives deep in our souls. The image can then bemodified where it is found wanting and the revised image used as areference and guide for our behaviour. In other words, it can portray afuture yet to be enacted.

4c

It is in this sprit that this article is written. It imagines that America isnot the true name of the area covered by the USA and Canada, but thatColumbia is. In doing so, a clear reference is made to the dove of peace.Not the dive-bombing dove that T. S. Eliot made famous in the fourth ofhis Four Quartets, Little Gidding. but the dove that needs to take wing ifthe hawk-ruled conditions of today are to be overcome. It is this dovethat we need to celebrate and encourage.

T R U E C O L U M B I A ' 7 7

To the air now, oh. Dove.' T i s n o w o r n e v e r .Lest the wellsprings of freedomare tainted forever.Dark Night is descending;'Twill envelope us all;Unless Thou ascendingFree us from our thrall.

This poem, called the Hymn to Columbia, comes from Rare Albion - TheFurther Adventures of the Wizard from Oz. It occurs in a scene in whichgold is replaced by consciousness as the balancer of economic life andspeaks of the challenge before us to see through the enchantment bywhich we are kept only partially conscious of modem history. It calls onthe dove to prevail and for hawkishness to be set aside, both as regardsour soul life and our external affairs. For we live in a time where the oneis but a reflection of the other.

Peace will not come from pious utterings. It will come throughdeeds done in freedom and out of love. Thus we must write into theworld our knowledge of peace. Columbia needs to become the true nameof North America. But more than this, the principle of uniting statescentrally needs to give way to confederation. Each needs to recogniseand respect the others and no one should take the high ground. Moreover, this principle should not only operate within sovereign countries,that is, between their provinces. It should also operate between sovereignnations. It is not the consciousness soul that would create a centralisedworld polity of the kind that many representatives of the Anglo-American peoples have in mind. That is an enterprise of the shadow ofthe consciousness soul. To be the centre of the world, as each bearer ofthe consciousness soul has to become, entails the challenge of not, fromthat point, seeking to dominate the world, but of asking what one'sunique contribution to it is. Megalomania arises where this question isnot asked, where, that is, power is not stilled. It comes out when the I ofman becomes slave to selfiinterest to such an extent that nobler springsof action are "crowded out", to use a term beloved of economists.

Instead of the United States of America, then, the ConfederatedStates of Columbia. But can the USA overcome its centrism? Can the I-

' Rare Albion, the Further Adventures of the Wizard from Oz - A Monetary Allegory,Christopher Houghton Budd. New Economy Publications, Canterbury 2005. (NewEconomy Publications are available from cfae.biz/publications.)

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being of its citizens be lifted heavenwards or are the forces of egoism toostrong? In going "west", has humanity encountered a phenomenon itc a n n o t m a s t e r ?

As an image, the Confederated States of Columbia has bothinternal and external aspects. Internally, the provinces within the singlepolity of the USA are meant. But externally Columbia can be understood as the entirety of Britain, Canada and the USA. Self-consciousness does not need to become synonymous with self-interestand narrowness of vision and purpose. Without self-interest, of course,self-consciousness cannot develop. But nor can it rest there. By way ofenlarged egoism, it has to be led over into interest in the other, seeinghumanity as one s family. In this matter, the saying that without visionthe people perish was never more apt and prescient.

*

If Britain, Ireland, Canada and the USA were seen as one "place",greater meaning could be given to the name "Columbia". For Anglo-American dominion will not be overcome by external force. That is but apathway to protracted warfare, however subtle its forms. More precisely, it is the road to non-freedom and conditional action.

The ancient Columban monks - whose name links them and whatthey represented to the Columbia story - were free and unconditioned intheir relationship to the Christ Event, without which the idea of peace ismeaningless. They did not depend on external authority for their truth.It was bom of direct experience. Indeed, external authority can be seenas the aggregated refusal to become responsible for one's own actionsand one's own destiny.

The West is saturated with concepts of centralised authority anddominion over others. Adversarial relationships are considered thenorm. There has to be a victorious party and a vanquished one. Ancienttraditions live on in this. Yet this can never be the promise of Columbia,nor can it transform the special relationship from a tool of supremacy tothe means for building a new community out of humanity's separate-ness. Dominion over others is but a device for imposing unwarrantedwill power on alienated human beings. It marks and measures our distance from freedom.

Something new has to appear in the hearts and souls of humanbeings everywhere. The uniqueness of everyone's spirit has to be calledforth and enabled to express itself. In truth, this is what "the West'should invest its money in. This is the true destination of today's global

T R U E C O L U M B I A

capital. We should capitalise unfolding destiny, not land. We shouldpass beyond the garnering of "financial' assets" to create instrumentsthat, in their effects, enable the human spirit to realise itself, both at thelevel of the individual and of peoples. Investment in Columbia wouldhave this character to it. Its sign would be the triple one of a worldwidechoir of cultures, sovereign national polities, and a single but sharedglobal economy.

*

Is this all fanciful notion? Is this Columbia yet another Utopia, an idledream that leaves the world untouched? Or is it a real event that occurswherever the human spirit is truly capitalised, enabled thereby to rayinto, effect and order our affairs?

The answer to this question has to be "it depends." It dependson one's point of view. Looked at in so-called pragmatic terms, theidea of Columbia is at best bizarre. In the realm of the imagination,however, it should not be dismissed. For modem economic life is governed by ideas, not pragmatism. What is "the invisible hand" if notan idea? What "the market" or "market forces"? Ideas are the stuff ofeconomics. Get the ideas wrong and social life itself will become disfigured. As Rudolf Steiner once remarked: "Grievances often arise ina way which is right, but are remedied under the influence of falseconcepts. In every detail people evolve these false ideas and carrythem over into their whole conception of the economic process, resulting in havoc."^

Conversely, get the ideas right and insight can be born, light canbe shed on practical affairs - even though the insights may still strike oneas bizarre and somewhat hanging in the air. Here is an example, offeredin all seriousness.

The special relationship is nowadays seen as an asymmetricalaffair between two brothers, with the bigger of them, the US, bossingabout his littler sibling — "poodle Britain", in the image of detractors.But is the power of the USA born of itself or because of a failure on thepart of Britain to fulfil its moral tasks in our times? A truer picture mightbe that of an artful lad setting up his older brother. After all, it is Britisheconomic philosophy that governs economics today, not American. AndAdam Smith was Scots, not American. If one is looking for a first

^Economics - The World as One Economy, New Economy Publications, Canterbury 1996,Lecture 8, p. 110.

8 0 C H A R T I N G T H E V O I D T R U E C O L U M B I A 8 1

glimpse of Columbia, therefore, one should arguably look to Britain, theAnglo half of the special relationship.

But for this, a start has to be made in London, where newfinancial instruments need to be developed that in their effects and overtime write down the value of real estate and write up the value of personal credit, enabling capital to escape the vagaries of the market andbecome the expression, instead, of the unfolding human spirit. In thespring of 2005, Barclays Capital, a branch of Barclays Bank, describedits activities as "blue sky thinking in the capital markets". Asked whatwas meant, their communications department said, "outside the box,able to think laterally, and open to new ideas."

This can, of course, be no more than marketing speak. Might itnot, however, also be an opening point? For all its self-serving andmegalomaniac intent, and albeit in financial guise, might the specialrelationship not yet provide a vehicle for something new, spiritual andhumani ty-wide?

What, concretely, do I mean by "new financial instruments"? As regardsits understanding of economic life, the anthroposophical movement isperhaps universally influenced by Rudolf Steiner's idea of "gift money",which, also almost universally, is regarded as synonymous with donations. But for our understanding of modern economic life, this cancreate three problems. The first is that, while donations may be anexample of gift money, this was not quite Rudolf Steiner's meaning. Hespoke of three kinds of money, the particular quality of which is given bythe economic function they play. Not by the human relationship thataccompanies it, but by our ability to base our transactions on a consciousness of the nature of economic life rather than our personalintentions in regard to it. Thus, in today's economic life "three distinctdomains arise, so far as money is concerned, those of loan money,purchase money and gift money... Moreover, each kind of money onlybecomes what it is at the moment when it is actually entering into theeconomic process or passing over from one form of economic process toanother. It actually happens that in the economic process moneyundergoes metamorphoses, acquiring different qualities as it becomesloan money or gift money." As regards gift money, although Steiner

All references in this paragraph are from Economics — The World as One Economy,Lecture 12, op. cit.

says, "Fundamentally speaking, gift money is all that is spent on education, all that is spent on endowments and the like," he qualifies thisremark in two specific and technical ways. Firstly, gift money has "theeffect of preventing the darhming up of capital in land, which is soruinous for the economic life." Secondly, .. in a true economic sense,... for free gifts, you will use old money - money that loses its value assoon as possible after the gift is made; provided that the person whoenjoys the benefit of the gift has just enough time to make his purchasesw i t h i t . "

Though important in terms of social relationships, it is not the actof giving that is of interest, so much as its economic effects. Only if adonation has the effect of gift money can it be said to be an example ofgift money. Some donations do not have this effect. If the gift is madefrom borrowed money, for example. On the other hand, certain non-gifts can represent gift money, such as investments that get written off.

A second problem is that we tend to assume gift money is theform of finance for cultural life, which, thirdly, we further assume to be arealm of society apart from other economic activities. Thus we look todonations to fund cultural activities, forgetting that Rudolf Steiner didnot define cultural life in this way. To say that spiritual life is "all thatunfolds from the individual human being as talents and skills, bothphysical and spiritual,"^ is not to equate spiritual life with the culturalsphere of society. Every human being is in all three spheres - cultural,political and economic. One can no more belong to the cultural spherebut not the economic than one can think but not have a metabolism.

This lack of analytical rigour on our part often has the furtherconsequence that we become donation dependent, that we under-valueour contribution to society, and that we are stinted in our readiness toremunerate "spiritual workers". To make matters worse, lack of moneyis often said to be the cause of unviable activities when in fact it is often alack of understanding of the nature of modem money.

But a greater problem is that in "naively" linking gift money tothe "cultural sphere" we fail to recognise the many other ways thatspiritual life becomes economically manifest today, especially in the fieldof finance. As a result, we tend to misread today's more telling financialphenomena.®To say that spiritual life is "everything that is based on the natural aptitudes, spiritual aswell as physical, of each individual" (Threefold Social Order, Rudolf Steiner Press, London1976) is not to equate spiritual life with the cultural sphere of society. [Alternative rendering by the author.]

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Modem finance is shot through with what are essentially spiritualreferences. Although seldom seen as such, they nevertheless place brain-based economics in a quandary. Many are the commentators whoobserve that modern finance does not obey natural laws or even theconcept of supply and demand.^

Here are some examples: Leverage - a physical image for aninvisible process. Growth - an etheric phenomenon mistransposed tophysical production. Blue-sky thinking — the opposite of "anchoring", amuch-used image in currency matters. Bond finance, where the investment is against income stream (that is, the need for something) ratherthan the assets required to provide it. Leasing rather than directlyowning physical assets, an important aspect of division of labour, itself aprofoundly spiritual principle on which the entirety of modern economiclife rests. The fact that one cannot own a company, only the capital in it.Or that modern credit creation requires no capital. Fractional reservelending — not, as many regard it, a trick of bankers, but the result of thehuman spirit working its way into material existence. The importance ofderiving income from core activity rather than "asset inflation", a basicpart of healthy business practice. The term "speculation", which reallymeans making an image for oneself, mirroring in oneself a possiblescenario. Sensing the future, in other words. Finally, the recognition thatmodern economic life is increasingly "weightless", meaning that valueinheres in consumption not production. Weightless economics! Howmuch closer can one get to Steiner's observation that to understandeconomics we need to "think with that which flies away from theearth."? '®

In speaking of new financial instruments, therefore, I have in mindfurther developments in the field of finance where many phenomena of aspiritual kind already exist. In particular, investments in real estate thatallow the asset to act as store of value, but the use of the asset to be "given"to the user. For example, a pension fund could own real estate as part of aportfolio and strategy designed to provide school infrastructure. Or theaveraging of investment returns by systematically giving away (writingoff) the "froth" element of gains made in volatile markets so that thebeneficiary is another party. Or using share companies to invest in small,fledgling and new businesses, instead of merely lending them money.' A famous example is the financier, George Soros. Less spectacular but equally interestingare the Dissent in Science seminars regularly held at the London School of Economicswhere mainstream economists debate the limits of rationalism.

Economics - The World as One Economy, Lecture 1, op. cit.

In the end, these may not.be new financial instruments at all butthe use of traditional arrangements in a new context. One that isunderpinned by cooperative rather than selfish mores and that does notsee economic life and social health resulting from everyone looking afterhimself by extracting value from the economy and marking it to his"own" account, but recognis'ing that true economic and social healthrests on circulation, not possession - the circulation of capital, the circulation of the means of production, and the circulation of money.

All this may seem remote from my starting point - the specialrelationship between Britain and the USA. But what else, if not thecondoning of apathy or some form of political upheaval, is our responseto be? Modern finance needs to be understood as a threshold phenomenon. That means, as the "external" medium in which the limits ofself-interest as a social principle are met. Then we will see the metamorphosis of finance as a vehicle for change, especially for thedevelopment of enlarged egoism. After all, it is from this that, shadowlike, the new imperialism derives. The Anglo-Saxons especially becomemegalomaniac when they fail to make this step. As a result, the specialrelationship becomes an instrument of global economic dominance, andthrough that of spiritual enslavement also.

Its true promise, however, is to act as a catalyst for global economic partnership between all the peoples of the world, and thereby toprovide an opportunity to discover true freedom.

85

The Future of the English Language

Adam Bi t t les ton

There is an old story, which in different countries takes different forms.Told by Geoffrey of Monmouth and others as an historical event, itbecame the theme of King Lear. As a fairy story it appears in Germanyas The Princess at the Well: in England, in one of its forms, as Cap ORushes.

Three daughters of a kingly father are asked to express their lovefor him. The first two do so in extravagant terms; the third will only say,in Shakespeare's words:

"Good my Lord,You have begot me, bred me, loved me; IReturn those duties back as are right fit.Obey you, love you, and most honour you."

Or, in the fairy story:"I love you like salt."

The father drives his third daughter away with bitter anger; tohim her words mean nothing.

In this story part of the mysterious tragedy of human speech iscontained. Not only do we fail to understand other languages than ourown; within the same language, we fail to receive each other's meaning,to recognise the full human reality behind the other's words. This failureis deeply interwoven with human history; but we can see it happening ina particularly critical sense at the present time.

Far into the past it was already a problem how to find words bywhich some part of the wisdom of the Mysteries could be told outside, tohelp human beings to find their way through life. There has always beenthe risk of arousing anger by saying something that would not beunderstood; and yet sometimes this risk had to be faced. The thirdprincess, in the fairy-story version, uses Mystery language, speaking ofSalt as it was understood by the Rosicrucians; and she meets what is

8 6 C H A R T I N G T H E V O I D T H E F U T U R E O F T H E E N G L I S H L A N G U A G E 8 7

described in the Sermon on the Mount: "Cast not your pearls beforeswine, lest they turn and rend you." Those fully satisfied with the earthlyconsciousness, looking only for what will help the earthly mind to fulfilIts own aims, may well reject with intense irritation a spiritual knowledgethat is bom of suffering. And so the princess must go into loneliness. Inthe Grimm story she is described as weeping tears that turn into pearls.But she was not wrong to have made the attempt, for eventually she isu n d e r s t o o d .

Cordelia uses ordinary human words to express the personalmystery of her own feelings; and is just as violently rejected. What wewant from another human being we can understand without leaving thecomfortable familiarity of our own minds; but to understand what theother really thinks and feels we have to venture out into the cold, into thestorm — and Lear is not yet ready to do this. For each of us, anotherhuman mind is a supersensible reality. And as human minds, withdeveloping individuality, are coming to be less and less only the productsof a particular status and environment, each human being will present usmore and more often with the problem of listening to a mystery, whichwe have still to learn.

In all this, the development of human language plays a significantpart. For language is not simply a convenient code, which we may ormay not be able to decipher. It had from the beginning an inner relationto all that it described. To pronounce the name of a person or thing wasat the same time to possess something of their innermost being. Language was a ladder that led directly back to heaven. Only through manyages, and many changes, did language come to be regarded as if it were atrivial formula for the appearances of things, and no true revelation oftheir Divine meaning.

Plato has described in his dialogue Cratylus how it is possible todispute between these two ways of regarding language: those who stillsee its ancient divine wonder on the one hand, those concerned only withits practical, conventional, apparently arbitrary usefulness on the other.The last claim that language is arbitrary, since apparently any sequenceof sounds can be chosen for any meaning. The first say that there isalways heavenly wisdom behind the choice of particular sounds. Bothcan bring forward powerful examples. But for good reasons the argument is inconclusive. It is just as when two people discuss a man theyknow, and one continually brings out his faults and weaknesses, whilethe other only remembers the good fundamental purposes of his life.

Earthly language, like earthly man, lives in the tension between

reality and illusion. When Cordelia speaks to Lear, or a poet to hisreaders, or an Apostle to the struggling, uncertain soul, language is botha miraculous help and a baffling hindrance.

We can try to look at particular languages from this point of view.And in the English language today we meet problems more acute in thisrespect than there have ever been before. Rudolf Steiner, out of hisprofound, intimate insight into the history of language, sometimesexpressed this drastically. If such remarks seem indigestible, we shouldnot turn and rend him. They are never meant to finish the subject - butto call our attention to some part or other of a problem deeply rooted inman's history, which we can only gradually hope to grasp.

For example, in a course of lectures on social and educationalproblems (Stuttgart, 13 July, 1919) Rudolf Steiner said that the terms ofthe Versailles Treaty were unclear because the operative text was not inthe former diplomatic language, French, but in English. And he goes onto say that English has the peculiarity "that in it everything whichshould be comprehended spiritually cannot be expressed immediately, asis given, if one takes the language only as it is there today." And later:"In the Anglo-American language there is no longer that livingrelationship of the human soul with the element of language whichexisted in ancient times. Language has separated itself from the humanbeing; it becomes, as language, abstract. If one hears English spoken,certain turns of speech, particularly sentence-endings, always give theimpression of a tree in which the outermost shoots and twigs of thebranches have withered. The language allows the soul element whichfilled it to die away."

Our first reaction to such statements may be an indignant protestthat modern English is in fact one of the richest and subtlest means ofhuman communication that have ever existed. But further thought mayshow that this does not really contradict what Rudolf Steiner says. Justbecause its own life as language has ebbed, modem English may beamenable to extraordinarily varied, subtle, and individual uses. If wetake as an outstanding example the English poetry of the last forty years,we can see how violently the normal habits of the spoken or writtenlanguage are transformed in order to provide an instrument for eachpoet. "If one takes the language only as it is there today" - poetry couldnot be written at all. Certainly poetry has always used somethinggrander and richer than ordinary everyday speech. But what it has usedhas been recognisably close to the source from which the general life ofthe language flowed. Now it is as if the poet had to breathe a quite

8 8 C H A R T I N G T H E V O I D T H E F U T U R E O F T H E E N G L I S H L A N G U A G E 8 9

individual, characteristic life into something that would otherwise bee m p t y .

Or we can take a single example from another field. Recent testsshowed that very few average young people to day, even including thosewho have made active efforts to understand what Christianity is, canfind in the word "Grace" any definite meaning. With many other wordsthat were central in Christian teaching, it has become like a piece ofempty nutshell, an indication that a kernel once existed.

In ordinary life we can observe how many things we say do notmean much. Perhaps we are only giving reassuring signs that we aregoing to behave normally, however strange our inner weather may havebecome. Or when we do want to make a signal from our innermostselves, only quite conventional and apparently irrelevant words maycome to our lips.

And here we are approaching the heart of what Rudolf Steinerhas to say about the English language. He does not regard the process of"withering", of which he speaks, as a misfortune for the world; on thecontrary, it is very necessary that English, which tends to become thenearest we have to a world language, should be in this condition. In thesame lecture, he says that this is a thoroughly healthy thing forhumanity. "In the future, it will not be possible to reach mutualunderstanding in English without developing an immediate, elemental,intimately felt understanding between man and man, which does notitself live in what is spoken, but will give to language a new life".Something like a true thought reading must be achieved; what is saidmust be regarded only as a signal, calling us to attend to the other'sthoughts, which he can't fully express. This will call for a new atten-tiveness to the other's invisible being; it will be healthy that we have tomake the effort to meet him on a higher level than that of spoken words.This effort is something that all mankind should learn to make; the needto do so will be particularly evident wherever English is spoken.

*

We may be able to deepen our understanding for this if we consider themysterious place that English has in the history of languages. A generalpicture of those language groups belonging to the Indo-Europeanfamily, which were significant for Europe in the first millennium B.C.,can be drawn somewhat as in the first diagram.

Through the defeat and submergence of the Celtic-speakingpeoples, who had reached far across Europe (and indeed into Asia

Minor), a far wider contact between the Teutonic languages and theother language groups took place than would have occurred otherwise.What happened can be pictured in the second diagram.

English developed in the space left by the retreat of Celtic languages, itself built up almost entirely from Teutonic and Latin elements— a meeting of languages in character and history very different from oneanother, the noble intermediary having withdrawn.

We may regard this simply as one of the accidents of which history seems to be made—or ask for reasons. Why did the Celtic nationsgo under? It is not an easily answered question on any level. Muchfascinating work has been done on the rise and decline of civilisations,and their relationship to one another; but in the end there does not seemto be any tangible answer to such questions as this. Why could not theCeltic peoples have adopted what was useful in Roman civilisation forpurposes of organisation and defence, and retained their own languagesand traditions? To a considerable degree the Teutonic peoples were ableto do th is .

So long as our vision is limited to the external world, we cannotfind real answers. Just as the unity of a man's life is truly to be foundonly in a supersensible being, so the unity of a nation or a civilisation canbe found only in the Spirit that inspires it. And such Spirits, like humanindividualities, go through processes comparable to incarnation, and thewithdrawal from incarnation; entering, and withdrawing from, theorganism of a nation or civilisation, just as we put on and lay aside theearthly physical body.

When he spoke particularly of this, in his lectures at Oslo in 1910,Rudolf Steiner especially directed our attention to two such Spirits; oneinspiring the Greek civilisation, and one standing behind the Celticpeoples. Both these Beings, he says, went through a great transformation of the way in which they worked, in order to serve the deed ofC h r i s t .

The Spirit of Greece ceased to work directly through the Greeknation and the civilisation depending on Greece; this Spirit becameinstead the guiding Being of exoteric Christianity. The Christianitywhich spread widely through the world - using at first indeed mainly theGreek language - and which established itself firmly in Europe, receivedinspiration from this Spirit, who served Christ by giving form to thethinking and the life of the Christian Church through the centuries.Greece itself declined in political and cultural influence because itsguiding Spirit had taken so wide a task - which continued long after the

9 0 C H A R T I N G T H E V O I D T H E F U T U R E O F T H E E N G L I S H L A N G U A G E 9 1

V T e u t o n i c

L a n g u a g e s _

y S l a vy LanguagesC e l t i c yLanguages

[Asiatic groups}

I t a l i c I 'Languages I

I G r e e k

(Adapted from Meillet.)

Greek language ceased to be used in Western Christendom, thoughevery age found fresh understanding through the Greek New Testament.

Meanwhile the Celtic Spirit had gone through what we mayregard as a still more drastic change in the manner of his work. At a timewhen Greece had already flowered, the Celtic peoples seem still young,with great dormant potentialities. But at this stage the Celtic Spirit, whohad given them their ultimate unity, undertook a new task. He becamethe guiding Spirit of esoteric Christianity, working not through widemasses of people but among little scattered groups, to deepen amongthem knowledge and experience of Christ in ways that could not bethose of the Church in general - groups thought of as heretical, or thosewho inspired the tradition of the Holy Grail, or the true Rosicrucians.

The Gospels transcend the distinction between exoteric andesoteric; and they themselves indicate the kinds of knowledge whichbelonged to the esoteric realm by describing little groups of people towhom it was entrusted. The Star-knowledge possessed by the Magi; theknowledge about destiny and reincarnation given to those disciples whoshare in the Transfiguration; the knowledge about the future of theworld given to a similar group of disciples early in Holy Week - all theseare esoteric, even if some words about them are there for all to read. Andthe Spirit who was formerly the leader of the Celtic peoples now comesto be the protector of little groups, which can rightly value and preservesuch knowledge, or find it anew when it has been lost.

This is a most wonderful key to European history. It helps us tounderstand the defeat of the Celtic peoples, first by Rome, then by theSaxons and their successors. It illumines the flowering and the apparentfailure of what Toynbee calls the "abortive North-Western civilisation,"the Christianity of Ireland and lona. It explains the fundamental continuity, through the Middle Ages and on into modem times, of movements widely scattered in time and space, which can often do little tomake their purposes comprehensible or acceptable to the world aroundt h e m .

Without the deed of the Celtic Spirit, sacrificing an evident historic mission for the sake of a more hidden one in the service of Christ,there would have been no English language as we know it to-day. If wetake this thought with full weight, we may begin to see certain consequences following from it.

English results from the fusion of languages that were at a different stage of development, and had been subject to very differentinfluences. Linguistically, Anglo-Saxon has gone through a further

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development, the first consonant-shift, which Latin and Greek have notmade. But culturally Greek and Latin are of course infinitely richer. Andthe origins of their culture lie in Mysteries, which were for the most partoutside Europe itself. When speaking to Waldorf School teachers aboutthe history of language, Rudolf Steiner said of Greek and Latin:"Through all sorts of foreign influences, which have worked in anotherway than in Europe - influences from Egypt, from Asia - these languages have simply become the external clothing for a culture brought tothem, largely a Mystery culture. The Mysteries of Africa and Asia werebrought to the Greeks, and to a certain extent to the Romans, and thepower was found to clothe the Mysteries of Asia and the Mysteries ofEgypt in the language of the Greeks and Romans. Thus these languagesbecame external clothing for the spiritual content that was poured intothem. This was a process through which the languages of Middle andNorthern Europe have not passed..." (Stuttgart, 29 December, 1919).

The Anglo-Saxon language had qualities of soul, a certain warmmaturity; the words of Latin origin that streamed in, becoming a floodin the sixteenth century, brought with them echoes of Egyptian Mysteries, and a long history of legal and ecclesiastical organisation in theRoman Empire. Was there any power that could ensoul this mixturecompletely, and make it a clear medium for spiritual truths?

We come here to great riddles. Looking back, we see this language developing in the space once occupied by the influence of theCeltic Spirit. If it is to be fully ensouled, the help of this Spirit is needed.But he is at work in a realm beyond that of ordinary human language, inthe guidance of esoteric Christianity. He is guarding a knowledge whichcannot be fully expressed in ordinary speech - particularly at the time ofwhich we are now thinking, the sixteenth century.

But there is a great teacher, concerned with the life of esotericChristianity, who incarnates more frequently than ordinary individualities, Christian Rosenkreuz. Directly and indirectly, during thesecond half of the sixteenth century and the early years of the seventeenth, he inspires qualities of soul in the English language, throughwhich the diverse elements can be fused into a transparent instrumentfor the spirit.

In the polemical religious writing of the time language was misused to whip up indignation, and if possible to stun the opponent bysheer weight of invective. Each writer tended to become the prophet ofhis own self-righteousness; and the element of tranquil, genuine observation was in danger of being trampled to death among the sects. Those

influenced by Christian Rosenkreuz were concerned to rescue thiselement, by transcending in one way or another the religious divisions ofEurope. Thus in Shakespeare's work a world of strongly-marked, widelyvaried human beings appeared, not constructed to fit neatly into thecategories of' righteous" and "sinful," and whose author did not seemto be arguing any kind of a case. And the Authorized Version of theBible rendered the Hebrew and Greek originals scrupulously in a formwhich did not serve any sectarian purpose, but sought to narrow as littleas possible the fullness of their meaning. Behind the Version stood menwho shared Richard Hooker's profound desire that Christianity shouldnot be thought of as imposing a single pattern of mind and conduct onman, but as including and sheltering a wonderful diversity.

Hooker himself had written, on subjects usually treated in themost arid polemical style, in generous, humane English, which illustratesin yet another way how the language received a new inspiration at thetime. As his work is in comparison so little known, a brief example maybe given. Hooker is here defending the use of music in churches:

Touching musical harmony, whether by instrument or by voice, itbeing but high and low in sounds of a due proportionable disposition, such notwithstanding is the force thereof, and sopleasing effects it hath in that very part of man which is mostdivine, that some have been thereby induced to think that the soulitself by nature is or hath in it harmony. A thing which delightethall ages and beseemeth all states; a thing as seasonable in grief asin joy; as decent being added unto actions of greatest weight andsolemnity, as being used when men most sequester themselvesfrom action In harmony the very image and character even ofvirtue and vice is perceived, the mind delighted with theirresemblances, and brought by having them often iterated into alove of the things themselves. For which cause there is nothingmore contagious and pestilent than some kinds of harmony; thansome nothing more strong and potent unto good. (EcclesiasticalPolity, V, xxxviii, 1.)In the eighteenth century the danger to the language came no

longer from religious narrow-mindedness but from a prosaic formalism,which had Hooker's dignity without his heart. And a second time it wasdefended and enriched. This was done by men who felt their kinship withthe Bible and with Shakespeare - but also with those of their contemporaries all over Europe who tried to serve true Imagination. Men

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who saw that real knowledge is a creative activity, using all the powersrnan has, not only his sense-perception and his reason, became something like an informal European society, with manifold shared enthusiasms and energetic dissensions - a movement much too practical,earnest, and conscientious to be described simply as "Romantic."Through Goethe, Schiller, Novalis and many others, the German language achieved its first great flowering, comparable to that in Shakespearean England. And, often in close contact with German idealism,though in reaction against its more ponderous products, Wordsworth,Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats made English the instrument for music ofa new subtlety and complexity, even when they intended to be simple.

While in general the traditional religious life on the one hand, andrational understanding of the visible world on the other, had fewer andfewer positive, living mutual contacts, these men did all they could tobuild their thoughts into a golden bridge between earth and the spirit.There streamed into them inspirations from a realm where, as RudolfSteiner has described it, heavenly powers were making great preparations, so that spiritual knowledge should be achieved on earth, duringthe age that was approaching, in abundance and daylight clarity.

Thus Rudolf Steiner, as the first great teacher of this spiritualknowledge in the twentieth century, could link his work with Goethe's,and use much of the German Idealist vocabulary, with increased precision and simpler construction. Speaking and writing with a characteristic austerity and selflessness, he could make German a wonderfulmeans of expression for Christian spiritual knowledge. Very much thathad been esoteric he could make public, guarded by the language hechose so carefully against misunderstanding and misuse. Nevertheless hehad to meet bitter ridicule and every kind of hostility from those whomBlake called "the ignorant hirelings at court and university."

If we read Rudolf Steiner's work in English translations we aregenerally made aware, in spite of all the conscientious work that hasgone into these, that the clothes do not fit. Of course the German doesnot fit altogether either; but a master hand has been at work with thematerial he received from masters.

May it not be that English still waits for the full use that can bemade of it, until towards the end of this century another great wave ofspiritual teaching pours into the world? Once English was threatened bya fanatical religiosity, and later by a pedantic rationalism; now thedangers are greater still. Innumerable anonymous voices, in every continent, use English for commercial and political purposes. Behind such

words there may be no discoverable person who means what he says,only someone who knows what effect he is paid to produce. Where thetransmission of genuine meaning is intended, as in scientific periodicals,there may be an attempt to deprive language of any human character forthe sake of appearing objective; the kind of formulation is sought for(and this may develop further in the near future) which could be fed withthe minimum of alteration into an electronic "brain." On the otherhand, an extreme of subjectivity can be let loose in the arts," whereinstincts can express themselves without any necessity of conveying adefinite meaning at all.

Such tendencies all drag language into sub-human realms; andvery great impulses are needed to counter them. They are indeed held incheck by human common sense; but all the time they are exhaustingwords, knocking them about, reducing them to worth-lessness. Thosewith insight today already point out that we are entering the mostcritical period in the history of the English language, in which theheritage of the past can be lost, and, for the great majority of those whospeak English, communication on the deeper levels may break down.But to turn back, and deepen our appreciation of the past, though this isnecessary, is not enough.

The first great step into the future is to strengthen, through themany disappointments that must come, a mutual understanding beyondthe level of language, as Rudolf Steiner has described it. We have to acceptthe immense, the awe-inspiring differences between our minds. We needto build up an atmosphere of unhurried reverence for and interest in oneanother and in the matter that is being considered, restraining ourselvesas far as possible from immediate assent or dissent. What matters first isto see each other's thought, free of any words. A half-bom imaginativepicture, a swift clear dream, moves in the other's mind; sharing it withhim, we weave in spiritual light, from which words receive real meaning.

The attempt to do this is a training in selflessness, which preparesman for the realm of Christ. There is the temptation, for all who speakor write often, to fall too much in love with their own thought-processes.And these then hinder us. The patient and active listener has morefreedom to feel, wherever a real meeting of minds is going on, the great

I presence of Christ. And it is through His presence that language can beI redeemed.I Wherever real Christian sacraments are celebrated, with selflessj speaking and hearing, something of this redemption happens. ThoseI concerned with the sacraments given through Rudolf Steiner's spirit-

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illumined power to the Christian Community know this, with whateverlanguage they are dealing; though the problems of translation may herebe at their most acute. But what lives at such special moments must workinto all the regions where human mutual understanding is needed.

Interwoven with human history, there work the souls who haveshared deeply in the development of Platonism, both in its original andin its Christian forms. They are among the greatest lovers of thought,and artists in thought. If we look on the one hand at the development ofthe modem world, and consider on the other hand the picture of humanhistory given by Rudolf Steiner, we may be led to think that some ofthese souls, within the coming century, may be concerned, with othersmore Aristotelian in character, in a renewed consecration of the Englishlanguage - through which even trivial words will receive a flame that fitsthem to be bearers of a new revelation of Christ.

Externally our language may indeed appear, by the end of thiscentury, a dry, brittle tree. Words may seem at best capable only ofdescribing external facts; when they attempt to express inner things, thismay only seem to open up fathomless uncertainties. But there will bethose who can observe the flames that glow along branch and twig, a firethat does not destroy, but gives the dry words infinite fresh life.

No genuine word is too external or too trivial to receive thispower of redemption. Perhaps a very strange-seeming example may beventured. Even such apparently neutral, colourless words as the conjunctions once had qualities of soul, warmth and cold, about them. Andwhen language is used in the future in the Christian sense here meant,they will begin to acquire these qualities again. We may take the simpleword "and." There are worlds of difference where it is used in the senseof dead accumulation, thing upon thing without sense:

" To - m o r r o w a n d t o - m o r r o w a n d t o - m o r r o w . . . "

in the mouth of Macbeth or of a cynical modern - or if we hear with ourwhole being the word of Christ:

"I am the Alpha and the Omega."In all its uses, the word "and" can convey something of the faith

that the people and events of the world complete one another, that thereis harmony and meaning in bringing them together - or that the wholebusiness, by which we are linked in time and space, has no real sense.Every word, and words in their relationships to one another, can bec o n s e c r a t e d .

T H E F U T U R E O F T H E E N G L I S H L A N G U A G E

Perhaps we who try in our different ways, with something ofspiritual knowledge alive in our minds, to speak or write English-today,might compare ourselves to charwomen in a palace that has been leitalmost empty, beginning to sweep and dust in preparation for the Courtthat is soon to come, of which the Ruler asks that He be loved "likes a l t . "

99

Distinguish without DividingColeridge's Challenge to the West

By Terence Da vies

Most people will have had the experience of embarking on a project thatthey hope to complete within a given time, only to discover that theiroriginal plans are frustrated by subsequent unforeseen events. On theindividual level it could be a commentary on a book that takes moretime to complete than had been envisaged. On the domestic level it couldbe the refurbishing of a room the cost of which had been underestimated. The same process can also occur at the corporate or publiclevel, for example, the Scottish parliament building. In all these cases thecompletion of a project has to be postponed to a future date. This articleis concerned with a similar process taking place on a much larger scale.It will draw attention to what seems to me to be an historic postponement in the progress of the spiritual life of the West, which lasted ratherlonger in England than it did in Germany. I say spiritual to distinguish itfrom the political and economic developments which were taking placeat the same time.

The last two thirds of the 19th century saw the expansion of railtransport throughout the West and beyond. This can be seen as a culminating point in the development of the industrial revolution that hadbegun in the early part of the previous century. It changed the worldirrevocably; motor and air transport that followed are merely anextension of the process the railways began. If this is correct, if follows

j that the period immediately prior to the age of rail has a special significance. Consider for example the fact that people who died between1820 and 1840 spent a large part of their adult lives without experiencingthe rapid transport that the railways made possible. A few, who werespared the arduous labour required to furnish the necessities of life, wereable to develop their full humanity at a leisurely pace, in harmony withthe natural rhythms which prevailed before the widespread use ofmachines replaced horse power as the main source of non-humantransport. Notwithstanding the immense benefits that industrial tech-

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nology has brought, and is still bringing to people's outer welfare, itexacts a price on the inner level. It was as if Providence, anticipating this,put forth a special flowering of what humanity could be in its fullness tocounteract the inevitable dehumanisation that the indiscriminate use ofmachines would bring. Consider just a few famous names and thecontribution their work still makes to human inner well being: Byrondied in 1824; Beethoven, Blake and Constable in 1827; Schubert in 1828;Davy in 1829; Goethe and Hegel in 1832 and Coleridge in 1834.

Even before the advent of rail transport the increasing application of empirical science to the production of material goods meant thatentrepreneurs, who had sufficient determination and energy, were ableto amass large amounts of surplus capital over and above that needed tosustain and expand their businesses. In the hands of enlightened patronsthis wealth could be given to support the free spiritual life. Without thissort of financial backing it would have been impossible for Coleridge toacquire the instruments of thought that enabled him to formulate hischallenge to the West. It is remarkable that at the very outset of hiscareer he benefited from a principle that is not yet fully recognised evenin the 21st century. It is this: surplus capital amassed through theincreasing efficiency of industrial production needs to be directlychannelled to those people whose talents render them capable of satisfying the inner, spiritual needs of humanity. If it is directly channelledfrom individual to individual, personal intelligence and judgment canfreely operate. These talents then escape enervating bureaucratic surveillance, which is a condition usually imposed when spiritual work isfunded through general taxation, as is generally the case today. Coleridge's genius was recognised and given financial backing in the form of"an annuity of £150 for life legally secured to (him), no conditionwhatsoever being annexed,"" by the Wedgwood brothers, inheritors of thefortune their father Josiah had made through his world famous potteryproducts. {EV 178)' Looking back on his good fortune many years laterColeridge wrote,

... by a gracious providence for which I can never be sufficientlygrateful, the generous and munificent patronage of Mr Josiahand Mr Thomas Wedgwood enabled me to finish my education inGermany. Instead of troubling others with my own crude notionsand juvenile compositions I was thenceforward better employedin attempting to store my own head with the wisdom of others. Imade the best use of my time and means; and there is therefore no

time of my life on which I can look back with such unmingleds a t i s f a c t i o n .

BL V.l 205.^

Among these juvenile compositions was the Rhyme of the AncientMariner, now recognised as one of the finest poems in the language. Ourconcern, however, is not with Coleridge the poet but with his lesserknown role as philosopher. Because it was so important for hisdevelopment as a thinker, let us now briefly describe his visit toGermany.

At the age of 25, accompanied by his friends William andDorothy Wordsworth, he left his native country for the first time, sailingfrom Yarmouth on the 16th September 1798. During the voyage theWordsworths were sea sick and retired to their cabins; but he, displayingthat delightful sociability which was such an important part of hisnature, was soon on convivial terms with the other passengers. OneDanish traveller, under the influence of his own brandy and the youngpoet's charm was soon declaring that they had "Un Philosophe' in theirmidst. "Vat imagination! vat language! vat fast science! vat eyes - vat amilk vite forehead! - O my Heafen! You are a God!" (We have onlyColeridge's word for this eulogy, but independent accounts of his effecton people leave little doubt about its veracity.) The following eveningthe ship anchored in the Cuxhaven estuary and they disembarked atHamburg on the 19th September. Within days Coleridge had secured aninvitation to visit the poet Klopstock whom he regarded as the venerablefather of German poetry. He was moved to tears by this meeting andpromised to translate some of his host's Odes into English. Since theWordsworths were seeking complete seclusion, while Coleridge wanteda more social existence where he could practise the German languageand study its culture, they decided to go their separate ways: theWordsworths to Goslar, Coleridge to Ratzeburg where he lodged with afriendly pastor. This stay turned out to be the most effective way oflearning German, as he was later to recall in the Biographia Literaria.

It was a regular part of my morning studies for the first six weeksof my residence ... to accompany the good and kind old pastor,with whom I lived, from the cellar to the roof, through gardens,farm yard &c. and to call every, the minutest, thing by its Germanname. Advertisements, farces, jest books, and the conversation ofchildren while I was at play with them, contributed their share to

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a more home-like acquaintance with the language, than I couldhave acquired through the works of polite literature or even frompolite society.

BL V. 1 206.

By January 1799, as a result of working at nothing but German "frommorning to night", he was able to report, "I now read German asEnglish... On very trivial and on metaphysical Subjects I can talk tol-erably - so so! - but in that conversation, which is between both, Iungle ridiculously." Next month he dnd his friend Chester headed bycoach for Gottingen where he later enrolled at the university. Thereollowed a period of intense study where he said that he now workedar er than I trust in God Almighty I shall ever have occasion to work

again. During this time at Gottingen he was stimulated by all theacadeimc luminaries attracted to its university; he had a sense of sharing

^ Europe, of belonging to a broad community ofwor famous scholars. As we shall see later, it was this Europeandimension which gave weight, power and depth to his subsequent criticalan philosophical writing. There are several incidents that give a fore-as e o IS future expertise in challenging erroneous assumptions that

everyone believes without question to be true. An English friendreported how with "natural good-humoured effrontery" Coleridge0 allenged the opinions of those around him, making them think in newways. Another English friend. Parry was impressed by the way Coleridgegot the better of the argument in philosophical disputes with the German academics. This friend made particular reference to J. G. Eichhom,a pnncipal German theologian at Gottingen, who seemed to be doingms utmost to discredit the evidence on which the truths of Christianity isoased. Colendge" Parry wrote, "an able vindicator of these importanttruths, IS well acquainted with Eichhom, but the latter is a coward, who

k presence." His s tudies wi th J . F. Blumen-bach (1752-1840) on natural history and anthropology providedColendge with material that he was to use in the future to make theimportant distinction, which we will consider later, between reason andunderstanding. Amongst the host of German scholars and literati withwhom he came in contact, either personally or through studying theirwritings, the most important for him at this time were probably, Lessing(1729-1781), Schiller (1759-1805), Goethe (1749-1832), Jacobi (1743-1819) and Kant (1724-1804). Regarding the latter, another friend,Carlyon, recalled the party, which Blumenbach gave on the eve of

Coleridge's departure in June 1799, where the young poet dazzled thecompany with his brilliant talk. Carlyon remembered "somethinginexpressibly comic in the manner in which he dashed on, with fluentdiction but the very worst German accent imaginable, through the thickand thin of his subject." This could have been the occasion when, afterholding forth on the writings of Immanuel Kant he was much amused"by a young lady's expressing her surprise that he, not being a German,could possibly understand Kant's philosophical writings, which werenot even intelligible to herV' (EV 205-237)^

Coleridge's profound study of German philosophy continuedthroughout his life and included important writers we have not yetmentioned. It was Kant, however, who provided him, not with aphilosophical orientation, but with the instruments of thought whichenabled him to fashion his own system, some key elements of which wewi l l now cons ider.

"What are my metaphysics?" he asks in T/ie Friend - "merelyreferring the mind to its own consciousness for truths indispensable toits own happiness. The word merely is something of an understatement.If the mind is to profit from referring to its own consciousness it has tolearn to attend in an unusual way. He was very aware of this and madeevery effort to help the reader achieve it. In the Friend and also in theAids to Reflection "the aim of every sentence is to solicit, nay tease thereader to ask himself whether he actually does, or does not, understanddistinctly." {W if We have had a foretaste of this challenge to aheightened awareness in his conversations and disputes with Germanacademics. With characteristic psychological acumen he pointed to twodifferent ways in which the mind can function: it can make the effort ofattention, or it can rouse the energy of thought. If we are to gain access tothe latent power that animates his best work, we need a picture from theworld of the senses to set these elusive inner processes in a clearer light.Consider, for example, the difference between the physical activityinvolved in a tug of war and in a game of table tennis. The former is acontest in which each of two groups of persons holding the same ropetries to pull the other across a line marked between them; it requires aconcentrated, steady and prolonged effort involving very little movement. The game of table tennis involves alert anticipation and swiftbursts of agile, responsive energy. The inner effort of attention is like thatneeded for a tug of war — firm and sustained; the inner activity requiredto rouse the energy of thought is similar to that needed in table tennis —swiftly moving and responsive. Modern spiritual activity, which Cole-

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ridge is trying to stimulate, seeks not merely to understand these innerworkings but actually to experience them.

If we cultivate this experience it can help us gain access to anotherkey element in Coleridge's thought: the universal law of polarity. This issimultaneously a law of thinking and a law of life: a single powermanifesting itself through a generative interpenetration of two polaropposites that are not abstract but dynamic. We can start to grasp itstrue nature by visualising a magnet with its north and south poles. Butthis is only a beginning, because a magnet, which does indeed consist ofa unitary power generating two opposite forces, is an inanimatephenomenon. We need to supplement this inadequate analogy with onethat has a living content. We need a picture of a living unitary powermanifesting through two opposing forces. Imagine a person cuttingpaper with a pair of scissors. The power that cuts the paper comes from asingle living source; it operates, however, through two opposing forcescaused by the movements of the blades. Moreover, as they move againsteach other to make the cut, the friction thus produced gradually wearsthem out. Of course this takes a long time, but eventually the blades willhave to be sharpened. This illustrates the fact that polar opposites existby virtue of each other as well as at the expense of each other. Each bladeexists qua scissor blade by virtue of being attached to the other. Separated from each other they lose their status as scissor blades and becomean imperfect sort of knife. But, as long as they remain a pair, theygradually wear each other out: they exist at the expense of each other.Provided we look upon the game of table tennis as a single powermanifesting through the energy of two players we can gain a furtherinsight into this relationship. Each person is responding with alacrity tothe forceful and ingenious strategy of the other. Their ingenuity isincreased by virtue of each other's tactics, as well as at each other'sexpense when they lose a point. (W 36) We can grasp the true nature ofpolarity if we first: realise what is inadequate in an analogy, for instancethat scissor blades wear out whereas the forces they symbolise areregenerative. And secondly: allow the mind to hover over the pictures inthe analogies without letting it settle permanently on any single image.When it succeeds in grasping the meaning the images are trying toconvey, by wavering between them, it is exercising what Coleridge callsimagination, which is the basic act for apprehending polarity. Through itthe mind and to some extent the will, driven by passion for knowledge,can actually participate in the antecedent unity which is constantlygenerating polarities. That antecedent unity is the source, not only of the

polarities of thought, but also of the polarities of life. Coleridge calls itreason. By thus experiencing two interpenetrating poles as a unity wecan distinguish the one from the other, without dividing them into twoseparate items. We shall return to this later when we describe the circumstances and content of the English poet's thought interacting withhis German colleagues, notably J. C. F. Schelling (1775-1854).

Someone may wish to raise a reasonable objection at this point byasking, "How is all this related to real life? It seems to be very remotefrom the practical problems most people have to face" Obviously withina short article only a limited answer can be given to this question. But letme develop something I have already mentioned as a striking example ofseveral collective endeavours that are causing many inner and outerdifficulties and are likely to cause more in the future. Consider theenterprise that began with the introduction of rail in the 1830s. It progressed to motor transport at the turn of the century, then developed airtravel during the 20th century and ended when Concorde was decommissioned early this century. Space travel is excluded because it wasnever available to the general public. This enterprise of emancipatingtransport from its dependence on horse-power lasted about 170 years,and involved the genius, industry and co-operation of vast numbers ofpeople over several generations. The improvements in mechanical efficiency, which brought it about, have been achieved by concentratingmore and more on the outside world and ignoring the inner being ofman. The harmful effects of further expansion of this perfected travelfacility are becoming increasingly apparent. Predominant concentrationon the outside world is in urgent need of correction by directing attentiveenergy to the inner life. In other words, by trying to discover the purposeof air travel in relation to the general well being of humanity as it movesinto the future. A similar problem is becoming apparent in the field ofinformation technology. The astonishing facility with which data can beflashed across the world is accompanied by a regrettable deterioration inthe quality of attention needed to distinguish what is trivial from what issignificant. This means that what could be a blessing to promote the lifeof the spirit is in danger of turning into a curse, which if not counteracted, will seriously impede its progress, Coleridge called the age inwhich he lived the "epoch of the understanding and the senses". Thesetwo exarnples, chosen from many, suggest that this epoch in which weare still living is now reaching a crisis point. When viewed historicallythese difficulties are merely teething problems, which the sustainedattention that the study of his system demands can help us to overcome.

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We can then, in a small way, begin to make the transition to what Imight venture to call the epoch of imagination and reason. "Theimagination" he said "is the distinguishing characteristic of man as aprogressive being." (1^217) In other words if we want to make progresson the inner level to counteract the desolation which is increasinglyfound there, we have to learn to free the mind from its bondage to thesense world by letting it hover between images in the way previouslydescribed. These words understanding, senses, and reason are all keyterms in his system, which we have not yet explained. Let us examinethem in turn, starting with understanding.

Remember we are trying to distinguish the understanding as afaculty within the field of consciousness without dividing or separating itfrom the unity in which it subsists. An analogy may perhaps help us todo this. When looking at a great picture, say, the Mona Lisa, we canchoose to focus our rapt attention on her eyes so that we are hardlyaware of the rest of the picture at all. As soon as we dissolve this specialattention, however, we immediately become aware of the whole pictureagain. It is like that when we try to grasp the meaning of the wordunderstanding. The faculty, which the word represents, is part of atotality that includes sense, imagination and reason. For the moment weare leaving the last three in the background in order to focus ourattentive energy on the understanding. Unlike the" background of thepicture, however, sense, imagination and reason interpenetrate andmodify the understanding in manifold ways. This means that we havealready had to mention these background items before we have focusedon them individually. Any difficulties that may arise from this will> Itrust, be resolved when the unexplained item is put centre stage.

Considered as an organ of human intelligence, understanding is>according to Coleridge, "the faculty by which we reflect and generalize."(A 149) What does this mean? Imagine, when staying by the sea, youlook out across the water to the horizon. Obviously you are using yoursense of sight to do this. On clear days you are quite certain where the seaends and the sky begins. On other days, when horizontal cloud formations are present near the horizon, it is not possible to judge immediatelywhere the sea ends and the clouds begin. Sometimes what you thoughtwas the horizon turns out to be the conjunction of a horizontal cloudformation with clear sky above it. You are obliged to re/7ect in order todecide whether or not it is the horizon. You are trying to name thephenomenon presented through your senses. You have seen the meetingof sky with earth or water in many different circumstances and have

D I S T I N G U I S H W I T H O U T D I V I D I N G 1 0 7

generalised these diverse observations into one class of phenomena bythe word horizon. There is no such single word for the boundary formedby the meeting of horizontal cloud formations and clear sky. Anyonewho wished to make a special study of these phenomena would have tofind some term under which to classify them, such as, say, horizontalcloud line. If you look closer out to sea you will probably be able tojudge which name is correct for this particular situation. When you aredoing all this you are using your understanding. Let us sum up ouraccount of this faculty in Coleridge's own words:

if the proper functions of the Understanding be that of generalizing the notices received from the senses in order to begin theconstruction of names: of referring particular notices (that is,impressions or sensations) to their proper names; and, vice versa,names to their correspondent class or kind of notices - then itfollows of necessity, the Understanding is truly and accuratelydefined in the words of Leighton and Kant, as a "faculty judgingaccording to sense." (A 153)It is obvious from the above quotation that the senses are closely

allied to the understanding. The normal senses of sight, hearing, touch. etc. need no explanation, but in order to grasp what Coleridge means by

the word sense we need to make a special effort. If you take your eyes offfhis page and look at, say, the door of your room, you receive animpression from the outside world. If you now close your eyes and

j picture the door, you are still receiving an impression, but it is not asdefinite as when you had your eyes open. Sense, according to ColeridgeIS that quality of our psyche that receives remembered impressionsoriginally coming from our outer senses, even as those senses (of sight inthis case) receive actual impressions from objects in the room around usHe explains it like this:

Under the term sense, I comprise whatever is passive in our being,without any reference to the questions of materialism or imma-terialism; all that man is in common with animals, in kind at least- his sensations and impressions, whether of his outward senses,or the inner sense of imagination. This (is the) recipient propertyof the soul, from the original constitution of which we perceiveand imagine all things under the forms of space and time. (F118)®The important thing to notice about the "epoch of the under

standing and the senses" in which we are still living, is that the mind's

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activity is only stimulated by what it receives through the senses. It isenthralled by the outside world. Coleridge calls this the "despotism ofthe eye". The reason why so much modern discourse is dull and uninteresting is that people's minds are enslaved to what is already there, asfixed habit, in the outside world. Coleridge calls this "the lethargy ofcustom." If we have found any of the Coleridge quotations hard tograsp, it is probably because we haven't been able to overcome thisenslavement by rousing the mind to contemplate its own activity uninfluenced by anything received directly through the senses. Every time we"understand distinctly" what he is trying to convey (in my case usuallyonly after the second or third reading) our minds are strengthened. Whatwas at first a mere jumble of words becomes a source of energy andpower. This is because our humanity is being truly exercised and isthereby gaining access to its source, which is also, as we shall shortly seethe source of the outside world. This brings us to what Coleridge considered to be the most important truth he had to get over to his contemporaries: the distinction between understanding and reason. As apreface to my own attempt to explain this, let me quote from OwenBarfield's book. What Coleridge Thought, which over 30 years agointroduced me to the English poet's philosophy.

The distinction between understanding and reason is, for thecomprehension of Coleridge, an all-important one, and itsimportance is a matter about which he never had any doubt.Moreover he was deeply convinced that the failure of most people in his time to grasp the distinction was the very sleepingsickness of the age... He said in the Friend that, once his readers had grasped that distinction they would have little difficultyin comprehending anything else. The habit of usjng reason andunderstanding as virtual synonyms has however not ceased; sothat any reader acquainted neither with Kant nor with Coleridge finds the dice loaded against him. He starts off on thewrong foot, because in many modern contexts the vaguer con-notafions of the two words are actually the opposite of thoseimplicit in Coleridge's use of them. Reason, with its derivativesand parallels, reasoning, reasonable, ratiocination, often soundsto us the shallower of the two; understanding the deeper becausemore sympathetic. The first thing to do therefore, while we arereading Coleridge, is to jettison these more familiar associations. {W94)

Bearing this in mind and recalling what has already been saidabout understanding, we will approach the distinction between it andreason by the same route that its author took in the Friend {F101). Earlyin the explanation, he draws attention to the fact that animals possess arudimentary form of understanding, recalling the remarkable behaviourof Blumenbach's dog, which he had noticed years ago during his stay inGermany. He found the German professor had trained his pet poodle,"not only to hatch the eggs of the hen with all the mother's care andpatience, but to attend the chickens afterwards, and find the food forthem." In the Aids to Reflection {A 145-6) detailed observations of theintelligent behaviour of ants are cited as further evidence to convince thereader that this behaviour is a rudimentary form of the understanding.These are only two examples of what Bertrand Russell calls "animalinference". If we recall that when operating through the faculty ofunderstanding, the mind's activity is only stimulated by what it receivesthrough the outer senses, the following quotation will begin to put thenature of reason in a clearer light:

The understanding of the higher brutes has only organs of outwardsense, and consequently material objects only; but man's understanding has (in addition) an organ of inward sense, and thereforethe power of acquainting itself with invisible realities or spiritualobjects. This organ is his reason... It bears the same relation tospiritual objects, the universal, the eternal, and the necessary, asthe eye bears to material and contingent phenomena. (F 102)

By choosing to start with animal inference Coleridge gives us a picturewhich emphasises the radical difference between understanding andreason. We see before us a dog and a man. Although they share manycharacteristics, each is a totally different /ciViflf of being. You may be ableto train a dog to fetch named objects to help a disabled person (as wasrecently widely reported in the UK) but you will never be able to teach itto apply multiplication tables, or to swear on oath in a court of law. Thefact that dog and man obviously differ in kind is easily made clearthrough a picture from the outside world. The certainty that understanding and reason also differ in kind, however, can only be won byprolonged attentive energy. Why did Barfield draw attention to the factthat the failure to grasp this distinction was "the very sleeping sicknessof the age"? Because there are signs all around us that men and womenare considered to be merely highly developed animals. Fortunately,individual moral responsibility, which is a truth of reason, is still the

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foundation of law in most developed countries. But once we move to thepersonal and domestic level of behaviour where legislation is inappropriate, we find the sleeping sickness begetting increasing uncertainty,leading to inevitable moral decline. "But why," someone may ask, "cangrasping this arcane and hair splitting distinction make any difference towhat is admittedly a worrying situation?" The answer is clear. Moralimpulses do not come from the world of the outer senses which, as wehave seen, is accessed through the organ of the understanding. Theselife-enhancing impulses are received through an organ facing towardsthe spirit: "the universal, the necessary, the eternal." This organ isreason. Let us sum up this difference in kind between understanding andreason in Coleridge's own words.

all the organs of sense are framed for a corresponding world ofsense... All the organs of spirit are framed for a correspondentworld of spirit; tho' the latter organs are not developed in allalike. But they exist in all, and their first appearance disclosesitself in the moral being. {BL V. 1 242)

Coleridge often speaks of reason as irradiating all the other faculties ofthe nund. This is made clear in the following;

Without being the sense, the understanding, or the imagination, it(reason) contains all three within itself, even as the mind containsits thoughts, and is present in and through them all; or as theexpression pervades the different features of an intelligent countenance. (1^94-5)

Another important fact, which this comparison between animal andhuman consciousness reveals, is that animal consciousness is not irradiated by reason. This clearly shows that the understanding may existwithout reason. However, even in the most highly developed wideawake consciousness of any human being

reason cannot exist without understanding; nor does it or can itmanifest itself but in and through the understanding, which in ourelder writers (Hooker, Bacon and Hobbes) is often called discourse, or the discursive faculty... In short, the human understanding possesses two distinct organs, the outward sense, and"the mind's eye" which is reason; wherever we use that phrase(the mind's eye) in its proper sense, and not as a mere synonym ofthe memory or the fancy...

It must be added, that it is an organ identical with its appropriateobjects. Thus God, the soul, eternal truth, etc., are the objects ofreason; but they are themselves reason. We name God theSupreme Reason; and Milton says, "whence the soul reasonreceives, and reason is her being." Whatever is conscious self-knowledge is reason; and in this sense it may be safely defined theorgan of the supersensuous. (F 102)

Before we can conclude this brief survey of some of the most importantaspects of Coleridge's thought we need to try to surmount a difficultyimplied in the above quotation. This will bring us to the very heart ofColeridge's challenge to the West. The organ of reason is identical withits objects; one of its "objects" is God; therefore, reason is God. (This iswhat I had in mind when I said earlier that the source of our humanity isalso the source of the outside world.) It would be a brave man, however,who would attempt to define God. And yet if such a definition could begiven, would it not inevitably contain contradictions? This is preciselywhat we find in the doctrine of the Trinity; that God is one and alsothree. The understanding, precisely because it is the organ of the outers e n s e s ,

is bound to judge inexorably "'either one God or more than one(three for instance); you can't have it both ways." The Trinity,which is reason, cannot appear in the understanding except in theform of contradictories — in this case the contradiction betweentri-theism on the one hand and unitarianism on the other. {}V146)

To overcome this difficulty we need to be able to distinguish withoutdividing; and that very ability is itself reason. ( fF 116) It is a test of at r u t h o f r e a s o n

that it can come forth out of the moulds of the understandingonly in the disguise of two contradictory conceptions, each ofwhich is partially true, and the conjunction of both conceptionsbecomes the representative or expression of a truth beyond conception and inexpressible. (A 154)

Let us now retrace our steps to the point where it was stated that "sense,imagination and reason interpenetrate and modify the understanding inmanifold ways." (Paragraph 17) Having given some explanation of thesefour mental faculties, we can now expand Coleridge's remarks about the

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C H A R T I N G T H E V O I D D I S T I N G U I S H W I T H O U T D I V I D I N G

mind hovering between images, and thus reveal the relationship betweenimagination and understanding. In his lectures on Shakespeare hespeaks of

an effort of the mind, when it would describe what it cannotsatisfy itself with the description of, to reconcile opposites andqualify contradictions, leaving a middle state of mind morestrictly appropriate to the imagination than any other, when it is,as it were, hovering between images. As soon as it is fixed on oneimage, it becomes understanding; but while it is unfixed andwavering between them, attaching itself permanently to none, it isimagination.^

Let us conclude this survey with a terse imagination from Owen Bar-field. If we read it carefully, heeding Coleridge's remarks just quotedabout not fixing the understanding on a single image, we can gain directaccess to the essence of Coleridge's thought.

... understanding points us back behind itself to reason, to reasonas at once the source of living opposites and the lightning-flashthat arrests them at the entrance to the understanding and revealsthem as a stony landscape of logical contradictions bounded byi ts hor izon. 116)

Such, in the barest outline - apart from one item that will be touched onlater - is the essence of Coleridge's system, which I have tried to distilfrom many sources. He would be the first to acknowledge that theinteraction of his thought with the German philosophers, notably Kant,Fichte and Schelling, helped him to acquire the instruments that enabledhim to express it. Let us now recount what could arguably be called thedramatic climax of that interaction.

It occurred in the Wiltshire market town of Calne during theautumn of 1815. His German books were on the shelves in his study, partof the lodgings he was sharing with the family of John Morgan to whomhe had dictated about two thirds of the book that would eventually bepublished as the Biographia Literaria. At the end of July he thought thistwo thirds was a complete book, which would shortly be ready to be sentto the printers to meet an already overrun deadline. But he began to havesecond thoughts. Let his biographer, Richard Holmes take up the story.

Did the book have some sort of theoretical hole in its middle? Didhis concept of the Imagination need a philosophic and spiritual

grounding, as well as a critical one? And would he trace his own"circuitous" journey to these intuitive truths of the "Reason" asrevealed by the German philosophers?

What Coleridge now set out to dictate, which was to runfrom Chapters 5 to 13, was a detailed account of a philosophicaland spiritual conversion. Over twenty years, he had graduallymoved from the materialist views of the British empiricists(notably Locke and David Hartley), to the new "dynamic"German philosophy of Kant and Schelling. The essential changewas from a reductive concept of the human mind as a tabula rasa,"a mirror or canvas" which passively registered physical experience. In place of this (or rather, subsuming it) was a transcendentalidea of the mind, with its own mysterious and intuitive faculties,which actively shaped experience and had access to spiritualdimensions beyond rational "Understanding". {DR 393)^As what he at first thought would take only a few sheets began to

expand alarmingly to reach eventually 45000 words, he started to feel theBiographia would prove more important than his collected poems. Hebegan to see it as the "Pioneer to the great Work on the Logos, Divineand Human, on which I have set my heart." But, with the deadline onlya few days away, how could he possibly expound the intractable complexities of dynamic post Kantian thought, expressed by Schelling andFichte, to his empirically minded English audience? Spurred on by theapproaching deadline he boldly translated and modified many passagesmainly from the above German thinkers, welding them together into aconcise exposition of his own dynamic philosophy. This exposition,which occurs in Chapter 12, consists of two postulates and ten theses.Several passages in it are direct unacknowledged translations of Schelling. Possibly foreseeing the difficulties this might cause, Coleridgemounted a pre-emptive defence, in Chapter 9, against the charge ofplagiarism by saying that "all the main and fundamental ideas, werebom and matured in my mind before I had seen a single page of theGerman philosopher." {BL V.l 161-4) Towards the end of his life hesaid that this exposition of his dynamic philosophy

is unformed and immature; it contains fragments of truth, but it isnot fully thought out. It is wonderful to myself to think howinfinitely more profound my views now are, and yet how muchclearer they are withal. The circle is completing; the idea is cominground to, and to be, the common sense." (r7'28 June 1834)^

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However, Owen Barfield, having access to these later more profoundand clearer views, has said that Chapter 12:

is the place where, more than anywhere else, the dynamic philosophy is brought together in epitome.And that the content of Chapter 12should be allowed to transpire from this book (i.e. Barfield'sWhat Coleridge Thought) taken as a whole. (W 63)

Richard Holmes, concluding his account of Chapter 12, says that thetwo postulates and ten theses "have never attracted serious philosophiccommentary". {DR 408) This may have been true before the publicationof Barfield's What Coleridge Thought in 1972, but after that eventserious philosophic commentary did become available. The real climaxof Coleridge's interaction with German dynamic philosophy comes,however, not in Chapter 12, but in the one that follows.

Coleridge was finding it increasingly difficult to finish thischapter. Even when he had modified the German thinkers' one-sidedness from out of his own vast learning which predated Descartes,he knew his English readers believed that the French philosopher'sseparation of mind from matter was a self-evident fact. Moreover, hewas acutely aware that the truths he had to convey "were directly thereverse of all that his readers "had ever been accustomed to consider astruth. The penultimate paragraph before the now famous break in themanuscript (the cause of which we will explain in a moment) is anattempt to help the reader to contemplate intuitively

one power with its two inherent indestructible yet counteractingforces, and the results or generations to which their inter-penetration gives existence, in the living principle and in theprocess of our own self-consciousness. {BL V.I, 299)We have tried to stimulate the imagination to gain access to this

one power manifesting as a polarity in the process of our own self-consciousness through simple and admittedly inadequate analogies fromthe sense world. This means we have to a certain extent overcome thelethargy of custom which blots out any comprehension of spiritualtruths. Coleridge knew that most of his readers were almost totallyunprepared to receive what he was trying to convey. At the end of theprevious chapter he had said he would "proceed to the nature andgenesis of the imagination" but with the deadline looming he knew there

would not be enough time to do this in an orderly way that mightpossibly convince an unprepared readership. And so the manuscriptbreaks off towards the end of Chapter 13 with the following sentence:

Now this tertium aliquid (finite generation) can be no other thanan inter-penetration of the counteracting powers, partaking ofb o t h .

After a series of asterisks Coleridge says he has just received aletter from a friend to whom he had recently sent the manuscript. He hada great respect for this friend's judgement and had asked for his opinionconcerning the Chapter on the imagination, and also what impressionhis friend thought it might make on the reading public. The letteradvised him to withdraw the Chapter and to publish it later as part of afull-scale work on the Constructive Philosophy, which Coleridge hadpromised and announced. Later, in 1817, Coleridge admitted that hehimself had written the letter. As no one knew this at the time, he is ableto say he is completely convinced by the letter and that he will be contentto state the main result of the Chapter. And so the first part of theBiographia Literaria ends with what has become one of the most famousdistinctions in English literature:

The IMAGINATION then I consider either as primary, orsecondary. The primary IMAGINATION I hold to be the livingPower and prime Agent of all human Perception, and as arepetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in theinfinite I AM. The secondary I consider as an echo of the former,co-existing with the conscious will, yet still as identical with theprimary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree, andin the mode of its operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, inorder to re-create; or where this process is rendered impossible,yet still at all events it struggles to idealize and to unify. It isessentially vital, even as all objects {as objects) are essentiallyfixed and dead.

FANCY, on the contrary, has no other counters to playwith, but fixities and definites. The Fancy is indeed no other thana mode of Memory emancipated from the order of time andspace; and blended with and modified by that empiricalphenomenon of the will, which we express by the word CHOICE.But equally with the ordinary memory it must receive all itsmaterials ready made from the law of association. {BL V. 1, 306)

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Fancy is the only faculty we have not yet discussed. We will giveone analogy that Coleridge could not possibly have used, which mayperhaps help some people to distinguish it from imagination. Recall thatmoment at the beginning of a flight when the rumbling of the plane'swheels on the runway suddenly stops and we have a buoyant sense offlying freely above ground. Imagination lifts us above the sense world ina similar way. Fancy remains earth bound; it is like a plane that cannever take off.

Let us now return to Germany at the end of the 19th centurywhere the historic postponement mentioned at the start of this articlewas beginning to draw to a close. In 1892 a young Austrian scholarpublished his doctoral thesis, Wahrheit und Wissenschaft. Commentingon the work of the philosophers that followed Kant, namely Fichte,Schelling and Hegel, he writes:

Because they did not understand the significance of the sphere ofpure ideas and its relationship to the realm of sense-perceptions,they added mistake to mistake, one-sidedness to one-sidedness. Itis no wonder that their all too daring systems could not withstandthe fierce opposition of an epoch so ill-disposed toward philosophy; consequently, along with the errors much of real value intheir thought was mercilessly swept away.'®We have already mentioned this period, which was so ill-disposed

toward philosophy; it is none other than Coleridge's epoch of theunderstanding and the senses. However, after Coleridge's daughter Sarahad published her annotated edition of the Biographia Literaria in 1847,what was mercilessly swept away in the realm of philosophy in Germanyhas remained in print in England and America. This means that thebook's philosophical chapters stand, like a Trojan horse, at the verycentre of English literary studies. Moreover, in my view, Coleridge haspreserved what is of real value in their thought by detecting and correcting the errors of the German philosophers; he is therefore confidentthat his system can withstand the fiercest critical analysis, as the following passage shows:

You may not understand my system, or any given part of it; or by adetermined act of wilfulness, you may, even though perceiving a rayof light, reject it in anger and disgust; but this I will say, that if youonce master it, or any part of it, you cannot hesitate to acknowledgeit as the truth. You cannot be sceptical about it. (FT 28,6,1834)

"Scepticism," said the now mature Austrian scholar, Rudolf Steiner,when he had built his own monumental system on the same foundationas Coleridge, "is merely the march of spiritual life from East to West,and it must be countered with a different spiritual stream flowing fromWest to East."" This stream seeks to establish an independent cultural,spiritual life that is in no way dependent on the past. Steiner describes ita s f o l l o w s :

In Central Europe there has always been ... a kind of oppositionagainst the cultural life of Greece on the one hand and the RomanCatholic life of rights on the other. Philosophy in Central Europeis one example of this rebellion. In England there is virtually nounderstanding of Central European philosophy ... German philosophy is thought of as something typically German, with whichsensible people can have no truck. And yet in German philosophywe have a late flowering of this rebellion, especially in Fichte,Schelling and Hegel. Even earlier in Goethe, we find the searchfor an independent cultural, spiritual life ... (my italics)

People would do well to recognise that the likes of Goethe(and the philosophers mentioned above) represent possiblebeginnings, and that they ignore at their peril what lives in German evolution as a whole, which must be developed. (7 46-8)'This rebellion, which is part of the impulse in continental Europe

to establish a cultural life untrammelled by political and economicinfluences, seems to lose momentum around the middle of the 19thcentury.'^ If one had to choose a starting date for the historic postponement, as it occurred in Germany, the death of Schelling in 1854would immediately spring to mind. The postponement ends on thecontinent when the impulse is given a firm philosophical foundation bythe publication of Steiner's Philosophy of Spiritual Activity in 1894."^

If we now look at the situation on this side of the channel, it isastonishing to find that what remained unfinished on the continent fornearly half a century was, in a certain sense, completed by Coleridge inEngland before his death in 1834. However, because of the difficulties inhis own life, he was unable to present his philosophy in a unifiedcoherent form. This meant that, in spite of his system having a profoundeffect on the more thoughtful members of the generation that followedhim, a further development of the drive towards a free spiritual life wasalso postponed in the English-speaking world. John Stuart Mill perhapshad an inkling of this when he affirmed in his essay on Coleridge in 1840

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|l that "the class of thinkers has scarcely yet arisen by whom he is to bej judged." By the very nature of the case it is impossible to determine

exactly when the postponement ended in England. But it is certain thatby the close of the 20th century, as a result of the publication of anincreasing number of books on all aspects of Coleridge's work, theimpulse to a free spiritual life is again gathering momentum.

It is hardly possible to exaggerate the relevance of his work to 21stcentury issues when it is considered in the light of the following remarksmade by Steiner in 1919:

People today must be shown how the economic life introduced byAnglo-American habits of thought is creeping along the ground,and that it will only be able to climb its way upwards it if works inharmony with those things, which people in other spheres arecapable of doing, and for which they (i.e. the Germans) havetalents. If this does not happen, Anglo-American world dominance by the economic life will be a catastrophe. (/ 49)It is as if Coleridge had a fore warning of the peril of ignoring

what lives in German spiritual evolution and strove to pre-empt futureignorance of it by rendering German philosophy intelligible to hiscountrymen. {BLV. 1,163) Barfield has described the circumstances andmeans by which Coleridge did this in the following passage:

Speaking, as he had to do, to his already empirically mindedEnglish contemporaries, he had, so to speak, to lay down histrack as he went along, and caterpillar wheels are slow comparedwith ordinary wheeled traction. But then they can go into muchcruder places. If the German thinkers could count on at least asecond-class road of understanding into the minds of theirreaders, Coleridge tried to penetrate where there was no longer aroad at all; to awaken to active thought minds for which "theconceivable had already been "reduced within the bounds of thepicturable." {W43)

In the wake of these caterpillar tracks, which Coleridge laid down solaboriously, others who were born after him have begun to construct aroad. It opens up what is for most English speakers uncharted territory.Because their traditional empiricism ties them to the physical world,their thinking is too weak to explore this unknown region. Coleridge'schallenge to all individual Westerners is to strengthen their thinking sothat they can gain access to this region, where two interpenetrating re-

D I S T I N G U I S H W I T H O U T D I V I D I N G 1 1 9

ebullient forces of one inexhaustible power are constantly bringing thephenomenal world into being.

N O T E S

1 Richard Holmes, Coleridge Early Visions (EV), Penguin 1990 pl78.2 S. T. Coleridge, Biographia Literaria (BL), edited by James Engell and W.

Jackson Bate, Princeton University Press 1983 Vol. 1 p205.3 See EV Chap. 9 p205 for full account of Coleridge's visit to Germany.4 Owen Barfield, What Coleridge Thought ffVJ, Oxford U P 1972, p7.5 S. T. Coleridge, Aids to Reflection (A), Bohn's Library, London 1893.6 S. T. Coleridge, The Friend (F), Bohn's Library, London 1906, pi 18.7 S. T. Coleridge, Shakespearean Criticism, Everyman's Library, London

1960, Vol. 2 pl03.8 Richard Holmes, Coleridge Darker Reflections (DR), Harper Collins,

London 1998, p393.9 S. T. Coleridge, Table Talk and Omniana (TT), Oxford Univ. Press, 1917

p311.10 Rudolf Steiner, The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity and Truth and Knowl

edge, trans, by Rita Stebbing AP New York 1963, pp296-7.11 Rudolf Steiner, The Boundaries of Natural Science, Anthroposophic Press,

New York 1983 p98.12 Ideas for a New Europe (I), RSP Sussex 1992, pp 46-8.13 See also Rudolf Steiner, The Riddle of Humanitv. RSP London 1990,

pp 123-4.14 See also Rudolf Steiner, Rosicrucianism & Modern Initiation RSP London

1965, p76.

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121

B o o k R e v i e wThe Isles: A History by Norman Davles, Macmillan 1999:

An Appraisal

Simon Blaxland-de Lange

Three years before the first appearance of the book under consideration,there were glowing reviews about an earlier, and even longer, book byProfessor Davies which made me determined to acquire a copy of it. Whatwas especially highlighted in these reviews of Europe: A History (OUP1996) was that the author had the strong conviction that Eastern Europe -including that part of Russia that lies east of the Ural Mountains -deserves just as much consideration as Western Europe. Nor was Idisappointed when I came to read the book. The story of Europe'shistory, beginning with the myth of the birth of Europa, marking thepassing of the thread of cultural evolution from Near Eastern Sumer andEgypt via Crete to European Greece (or - in spiritual-scientific terms -from the third post-Atlantean cultural epoch to the fourth), is told withthe conviction that, far from being at an end, this journey needs now toembark upon a new phase. Now that the colonial empires which theWestern European nations — Spain, Portugal, Holland, Belgium, France,Britain and to a lesser extent Germany - acquired from the 16th centuryonwards have in the course of the 20th century to all intents and purposesdisappeared, albeit amidst probably the mpst militarily turbulent periodin the whole of human history (1914-1945), the way now lies open for anew phase of development, oriented no longer around the principle ofcultural and social dominance or egocentricity but around that of theencounter with, knowledge of, the other.

Much is said about internationalism and, even, of globalisationthese days; but the history of Europe, as told by Norman Davies, makesit clear that humanity needs a fairly lengthy transitional period betweenthe nation-state era of the last few centuries and one where nation (andlanguage) cease to matter and, indeed, defer entirely to the integrity ofthe individual human spirit. Davies's analysis of especially the tragicdenouement in the 20th century of the European imperialist ventures -

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1 2 2 C H A R T I N G T H E V O I D B O O K R E V I E W O F T H E I S L E S ; A H I S T O R Y 1 2 3

now, arguably, being extended through the imperialist policies ofRepublican America - opens up a vista of a new phase of culturaldevelopment, dominated neither by Anglo-American economicimperialism nor by the Roman Catholic Church, centred around thenotion of being a European, a member of the European family ofnations. Davies is, however, not blind to the fact that this notion is as yeta potential that has - in Britain, at any rate - not even begun to berealised. It is, of course, very convenient to use the illusion of the "newAmerican century" to justify a perpetuation of monoculturalism andconfinement within a narrowly English linguistic heritage. But throughhis book one can indeed glimpse the possibilities inherent in theincredible linguistic, cultural and social diversity within Europe forpractising the art of getting to know the other, of acknowledging andmeeting the other individualities and individual othernesses around me.

One can therefore well understand why, as a first exploration ofthese practical possibilities, Norman Davies felt inspired — and possiblyalso obliged — to write a further thousand-page book on Britain itself.For just as the European family of nations could be thought of as a veryhelpful practice-ground for learning to know the other, so is it well-nighimpossible for Britain, at any rate, fruitfully to explore these possibilitiesfor as long as the notion of "Britain" itself has not been de-mystified,taken apart and (possibly) re-assembled in a different form. A wish, or apreparedness, to get to know the other entails a commitment to anexercise in self-knowledge. Not least for the English themselves. TheIsles: A History represents national self-knowledge (as distinct from self-preoccupation) on a fairly grand scale.

^ nutshell, is that the current notion of'Britain (as in, for example, British subject, British, BroadcastingCorporation, British Empire and, even, British Isles) is either a myth oris the fruit of imprecise or confused thinking. The crux of the issue is thatthe terms Britain" or "United Kingdom" are in many people's minds(and in library classifications as emanating from the Library of Congress) synonymous with "England", the clear implication of which isthat England has become to an overwhelming degree a culturally andpolitically dominant force with respect to the other nations of the Isles.

The intensely complex issues of nomenclature are analysed in thebook's lengthy introduction, which needs to be read if justice is to bedone to the complexities. As a historian, Davies is preoccupied morewith political than with geographical designations. He is therefore atpains to emphasise that there have only been two periods when the term

"Britain" has currency, one ancient (Celto-Roman) and one modem(the relatively brief period since 1707 of the lifetime of the unitedKingdom of Great Britain, with which Ireland has been - and is - invarying degrees associated). In this respect, he gives a helpful summaryof the states that have subsisted over the centuries in the Isles associatedwith the epithet "British", which is perhaps the most concise way ofillustrating how complex this whole subject is:

"- The High Kingship of Ireland, to AD 1169- The Ancient British tribal principalities, to c. AD 70- Independent "Pictland', to the ninth century AD- Roman Britannia, 43-c. 410 AD- The independent British/Welsh principalities, from the fifth

century to 1283, including Cornwall, Cumbria, and Strath-clyde

- The Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, from the fifth to the tenth cent u r i e s

- The Kingdom of the Scots, from the ninth century to 1651,and 1660-1707

- The Kingdom of England, from the tenth century to 1536,together with its dependencies including the Channel Islands,the Isle of Man, the Welsh March, and English-occupiedWales and I re land

- The Kingdom of England and Wales, 1536-1649, 1660-1707- The Kingdom of Ireland, 1541-1649, 1660-1800- The Commonwealth and Free State of England, Wales, and

Ireland, 1649-1654- The Commonwealth of Great Britain and Ireland, alias the'First British Republic', 1654-1660

- The united Kingdom of Great Britain, 1707-1800- The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, 1801-

1 9 2 2- The Irish Free State (later fere, then the Republic of Ireland),

s i n c e 1 9 2 2- The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland,

s i n c e 1 9 2 2 . "

The geographical picture ofTers somewhat more scope and flexibility for referring to Britain. According to Davies, who draws in histurn on the attestation of an intrepid fourth century BC Greek sailor,Pytheas of Massilia, Pretanike was the (Celtic) name for the Isles as a

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whole; while of the two main islands, the smaller, western isle was calledleme and the larger, eastern one Nesos Albionon. Pretanike was latinised as Britannia, and is equivalent to the Welsh Prydain (hence"Britain"). Thus although the proper geographical name of the largerisland containing England, Wales and Scotland is now (Great) Britainand that of the smaller one Ireland, there could be some justification forassociating the geographical designation of "Britain" with the totality ofthe Isles (of which more later).

To do so at this stage would, however, cut against Davies'simmediate purpose, the importance of which is beyond question. This isto achieve - through a meticulous tracing of the history played outespecially since the 14th century in these islands - recognition of the factthat during this time one nation, namely England, has increasinglybecome predominant, with the distinctive cultural and linguistic gifts ofthe other countries (to say nothing of regional divergences from thedominant south-eastern mould within England itself) being largely sidelined and tolerated as little more than quaint relics of an earlier age.Davies s view is that the future resides in each of the four major nationalgroups within the Isles becoming individual members of the EuropeanUnion - a "sovereign Scotland", an "English Republic", a "consolidated Wales" and "an Ireland at peace with itself:

Perhaps the main source of optimism lies in the existence of theEuropean Union. Unfortunately, the most positive aspect of theEU is rarely noticed. It is obscured by the misplaced obsessionwith purely economic considerations. But it is this: it gives a placein the sun to Europe's smaller and middle-gized nations. Economics were never at the top of the agenda of the fathers of theEuropean movement. It was always a means to a higher end. Itwas the means of forging a prosperous community in which allmember states, both large and small, could live in peace. For thisreason, the European ideal is despised by those who wish to hangon to the vestiges of a superior status and of national domination.In the old European jungle of sovereign states, an independentScotland, or an independent Wales, or even an independentEngland would have been vulnerable creatures living precariouslyamong larger predators. But this jungle has been banished. Underthe umbrella of the European Union, a 'Scotland-in-Europe', aWales-in-Europe' and an 'England-in-Europe' have everychance of doing as well as an Treland-in-Europe'."

B O O K R E V I E W O F T H E I S L E S : A H I S T O R Y 1 2 5

Davies himself is, in the most constructive way possible, conscious of his Welsh ancestry. His book on Europe concludes with amoving evocation of his marital partnership with his Polish wife,Myszka. There remains, at the conclusion of what is intended as athoroughly positive appraisal of his scholarly precision, balancedjudgement and humour, to ask whether Rudolf Steiner's indicationsabout, respectively, the Celtic British nations and the Slavic peoples ofEastern Europe (Poland could of course also be associated with CentralEurope) can suggest that something new and dynamic might emergefrom these peoples that is sufficiently powerful to transform the currentprejudices and assumptions underpinning the modern world.

In the European context, there is the indication^ that the culturalepoch following the present fifth post-Atlantean epoch will be one wherethe impulse of brotherhood and community-building that is characteristic of the Slavic peoples to varying degrees (and most of all of Russia)will come into its own in the sixth cultural epoch, whose beginning heplaced around 3573 AD. For present purposes, however, we need tofocus on what, if anything, might flow from the very different attitude ofEngland towards the other nations of the Isles which Davies posits asboth just and - in our time - realistic. For without something newentering into this situation, it is hard to see how what he envisages in thepassage quoted above will be sustainable in a world where the Anglo-American march towards world-domination tends to exert a decisiveinfluence on all other cultural and social impulses. The crucial point hereis Steiner's indication that, "soon after the Christian impulse had beenbestowed on mankind", the Celtic Folk-Spirit sacrificed his mission(and therefore in a sense also the traditional cultural identity of theCeltic peoples) in order to become the guardian of esoteric Christianity.

Two main conclusions follow from this. First, it will becomeincreasingly clear that any kind of resurgence of Celtic nationalism willbe at least as irrelevant to the future development of humanity as thecontinuation of English (or Anglo-American) domination which Daviesrightly deplores. On the other hand, it is my own conviction that, inaddition to the intensity of the Christian impulse that surged out of -especially - Ireland in the early Christian centuries, there continues tolive in the Celtic British nations a propensity for an appraisal of esoteric' See The Mission of Folk-Souls, English translation published by Rudolf Steiner Press1970, lecture 10 (16th June 1910). See also the lecture given on 15th June 1915, Preparingfor the Sixth Epoch.^Ibid., lecture 7 (12th June 1910).

C H A R T I N G T H E V O I D

Christianity which could become manifest to the extent that thesepeoples are able to make a sacrifice of a comparable nature to that madeby the Celtic Archangel. (This is an admittedly vague statement, but thisis not the place to amplify it more fully.) Second, and following on fromthe first, one can envisage that such a Christianisation of the ancientpagan Celtic wisdom, and its acknowledgement and receiving into thematerialistic "mainstream" of the Anglo-Saxon regions of Britainthrough a comparable quest for self-knowledge within Albion - England- itself, could lead to the re-identification of Britain as a cultural entity,comprising the totality of Celtic Pretanike, for the first time since thebeginning of the Christian era. Indeed, it could be that only in this waywould Britain be able to play its true spiritual role within the Europeanfamily of nations.^

These comments suggested by a consideration of Steiner's indications do not, in my view, take anything away from the validity ofNorman Davies's analysis and its conclusions. All that I hope I havedone is to add something which is in harmony with, and is largelysupportive of the implementation of, these conclusions. Whether or notProfessor Davies would appreciate a wholly positive endorsement fromsuch a quarter is at this point an open question.

For further research from a spiritual-scientific perspective, see, for example, Europa: ASpiritual Biography by Richard Seddon, Temple Lodge 1995 and Europe: A Cosmic Pictureby Maria Schindler, New Knowledge Books 1975. In the latter, Britain is depicted as one oftwelve members of a European star-circle, with a complex journey of development - underthe guidance of its inspiring constellation - from the Eagle of its visionary past through theScorpion of its present nature to a possible Dove quality in the future.

B o o k R e v i e wPoems for the Path by Sean Byrne. Age-Old Books,

1 Martello Terrace, Holy wood, Co. Down, BT18 9BE, 2005.Paperback, 83pp.

Margaret Jonas

Writing spiritual or religious poetry is one of the hardest creative acts, asit can so easily sound trite, sentimental, didactic or evangelical. SeanByrne, however, has had the courage to attempt to put mysticalexperiences into poetic poem and has not succumbed to these pitfalls. Heis a lyrical poet, a true heir of the Irish tradition of Yeats, and moreespecially the Theosophical mystical writer A.E. (George Russell). In hiswork, echoes of Christian romantic mystical writing, older religious ormetaphysical verse mingle with nicely understated and hinted at concepts of spiritual science.

The poems are quiet, meditative, simply constructed with eachword carefully chosen for its position, sometimes as a single line, e.g. in"Rapha-el 2"; Being / you / Rapha-el. /1 want /1 wait, j Hoped in whitwhiteness / For the healing / Tinkle tingle / Of the bell-spirit / Birdsong /Crossing / You / With the plumed plucked Branch,! Strength / Of thepilgrim feetOr with more traditional use of rhyme or half-rhyme - from "The Door1": Be I The Christ / In me! / Root / In my soul's blood j The slow strength jOf a tree

The reader should not be misled by such apparent simplicity andeconomy. It is a mark of a true poet when he or she knows when to let goof words, avoid unnecessary padding. If one allows the words to soundsilently and contemplatively within, there are after-echoes like clear bellt o n e s .

The unusual imagery of "What is a tree?" - It is a skeleton / Ofboxed, bracketed / And trellised light / A place of enchanted faces ... mayplace him firmly in the Celtic "faery" tradition, but it also shows avisionary way of seeing, of looking at the world. There are echoes ofRilke: Lord /1 want to make you my business j I want to make a business

1

1 2 8 C H A R T I N G T H E V O I D 129

of you! ("Prayer of a Capitalist"); or of Sufi poets; It is because You arehere / Shining invisibly like a sun-centre / Around which all these fragments orbit / Filling me out beyond my narrow self.... ("Periphery andCentre").

Many poems include the I AM, the name for the Christ-principleof man ... I AM / Echoed and mirrored / In the passing day Arecollection of the Gnostic writings, whose authors had retained thesense of Creator and Word being revealed in both the natural world andMan as Beings of whom it is possible to have direct experience.

The book itself is nicely produced in clear well set-out type with apleasing cover. It was given to me to review before a performance at therecent Cambridge Music of the Heart Conference, which seemed anaptly synchronous gesture, speaking of Venus as planet of both the artsand of mysticism. Sean Byrne describes himself as a writer, publisherand editor. This is his first published book of poems - his own voice inspite of the rich poetic traditions he inherits. May he find time to continue his contemplative inner work to produce more poems for the path.

N o t e s o n t h e C o n t r i b u t o r s

Virginia Sease is a member of the Executive Council of the GeneralAnthroposophical Society in Dornach, Switzerland.

Terry Goodfellow read History at the University of Cambridge and, afterworking as a teacher and director of a small community arts centre inLondon, has been the manager/co-ordinator at Rudolf Steiner House,London, since 1990.

Christopher Houghton Budd is an economic historian with a specialinterest in modern finance and Rudolf Steiner's contribution toe c o n o m i c s .

Adam Bittleston (1911-1989) was ordained priest of the ChristianCommunity in 1935. From 1970 he taught at the training centre of theChristian Community in Forest Row and at Emerson College. Formany years he was an editor of the Golden Blade.

Terence Davies is a retired professional musician. His articles haveappeared in a variety of anthroposophical publications for more thantwenty years.

Simon Blaxland-de Lange is the Administrator and Registered Manaeero f P h i l p o t s M a n o r S c h o o l . ^

Margaret Jonas is the Librarian at Rudolf Steiner House, London.

T H E G O L D E N B L A D E 5 7

2 0 0 5

Language; Symptom and Servant of CultureAmidst a political climate regarded by increasing numbers of people as sociallydysfunctional and marginal to their needs and aspirations, there is a tendencytoday for semi-autonomous cultures to emerge. Language, however, represents acommon cultural thread that both illumines our present situation and enables usto transform it. The articles assembled in the present volume examine ourmodern cultural predicament from the standpoint of Rudolf Steiner's researchon the evolution of human consciousness.

Goethe and the Evolution of ConsciousnessRudolf Steiner

Crisis of Cognition as a Language CrisisM a r t i n a M a r i a S a m

Awareness of the Time as a Perception of RealityChr i s t i ane Ha id

Owen Barfield; Harbinger of the 21st CenturySimon Blaxiand-de Lange

'O, for a Muse of Fire': The Imaginative Language of W.B. YeatsSean Byrne

Emily Dickinson and the Living WordCor alee Schmandt

An Improvisation on the theme of Educational IntuitionMartyn Rawson

I c o n s

M a r t i n S c h m a n d t

Poetry and PoeticsP a u l M a t t h e w s

Thinking around the Mother TongueEmil ie Salvesen

Notes on Translation, with special reference to the Works of Rudolf SteinerA n n a M e u s s

Words and their many Guises — a Brief Sketch of Comparative LanguagesRene Querido

This and all the following back-issues are available from Wynstones Press(address at the beginning of the book), either directly or via a stockist ofanthroposophical books.

T H E G O L D E N B L A D E 5 62 0 0 4

Together at the Table of BrotherhoodThe emergence of an increasingly global economy presents challenges to therights of individuals and social groups within nation states. Commercial interestsin cultural sectors like education, health provision etc. raise fundamental issuesabout entitlement, distribution and indeed the freedom of the human being. Thisissue of The Golden Blade draws contributions together on the question of howto reconcile the freedom of the individual with social responsibility.

Brotherhood and the Struggle for ExistenceRudolf Steiner

T h r e e L a w sMichael Luxford

Clash of Civilisations, Iron Necessity, 530 Billion Imaginary Workers: CurrentEvents through the Lens of Rudolf Steiner's Spiritual-Scientific Discoveries

Stephen UsherThe Iraqi War and the Threefold Nature of Human Society

Michael SpenceThe Karma of Money

Cornel ius P ie tznerEthical Financialism: A Fast-Track to Changing the Way the World is Financed

Christopher Houghton BuddThe Human Being between Globalisation and Genetic Engineering?

N i c a n o r P e r l a s

Threefolding or Global Governance?Christoph Strawe

"Com-panis", Economics and the CompanyL a w r e n c e K e e n

Delegation and Collegial Leadership, as exemplified in the Self-Regulation ofWa l d o r f S c h o o l s

Udo HerrmannstorferSolovyov's Vision of World Brotherhood

E l i z a b e t h C a r m a c k

T H E G O L D E N B L A D E 5 5

2 0 0 3

Sti l lness in the Storm

L i f e a n d D e a t h

Rudolf SteinerM e d i t a t i o n

Karla KinigerSelf-Discipline, a Prerequisite for the Practice of Meditation

B a r u c h U r i e l i

PrayerA d a m B i t t l e s t o n

Meditation and Some of its Practical ResultsR o n J a r m a n

The Eightfold PathAvishay Gershony

Reflec t i ons o f an A r t i s tJohn Sa l te r

Sustaining Purpose and ProgressSteve Br iau l t

Work as a Spiritual PathShirley Routledge

Meditative Practice in CounsellingTessa Lovemore

The Inner Work of a Biodynamic Farmer TodayRichard Smi th

Jonae l Sch i ck le rNicho las Green

Conservation, Causality and ChaosH a r l a n G i l b e r t

T H E G O L D E N B L A D E 5 42 0 0 2

Kindling SpiritThe Human Being's Responsibility for the Evolution of the World

Rudolf SteinerRhythm, Turbulence and Stasis: The Spirit-Matter Problem Revisited

H a r l a n G i l b e r tFlow through the Heart

Philip KilnerThe Globalisation of Steiner's Impulse for a Renewal of Agriculture

Ta ldeu Ca ldasT h e S a t u r n P a t h

N i c k T h o m a sS t a r C h i l d r e n a n d D i f fi c u l t C h i l d r e n

Georg KuhlewindThe Prospects for Social Threefolding Today

N i c a n o r P e r l a s

The Ramapo Salamander and Esoteric AmericaD a v i d A d a m s

Claude Lorrain: Journey into Inner LightV i v i e n L a w

THE GOLDEN BLADE 532 0 0 1

Trumpet to the MornClairvoyance and Thinking

C o r i n n a G l e i d eThe Mysteries of the Pleroma

Rudolf SteinerBolshevism as an Initiation-Principle of Evil

Sergei ProkofieffComputers and Intelligence

H a r l a n G i l b e r tDeath and Life in Modern Thinking

J o n a e l S c h i c k l e r

Awakening to the History of the Anthroposophical Movement and the SocietyBodo von P la to

Renewing Seed and Human CultureB e r n a r d J a r m a n

Anthroposophy and PsychiatryJames Dyson

Ready! Aye, Ready!Alex Nay lor

T H E G O L D E N B L A D E 5 22 0 0 0

Light on LifeG l i m m e r s o f T r u t h

Dor it Winter

Archetypes in BiographyHenning Kohler

A Reluctant AutobiographerDore Devere l l

Telling EncountersM a t t h i a s Wa i s

Coleridge: A Life IlluminedCora lee Schmandt

A Biographical FragmentN i c k T h o m a s

Chi ldhood I l lnessesBob Dudney

Verifying Karma ResearchEnge. Smit and Schage

THE GOLDEN BLADE 511 9 9 9

Together on EarthBeing Born into a Brave New World

John A lexandraThe Biodynamic Farm: An Embryo for the Threefold Social Order in our Time

Manfred KlettThe Meeting of Karmic Streams in the Communications Age

Simon Blaxland-de LangeOur Communion with the Dead

W i l l i a m F o r w a r d

Why on earth are we here?Andrew Wolpert

The Karmic Community of Samuel Hartlib, John Dury and Johann AmosC o m e n i u s

Ken GibsonJapan and my Destiny

F u m i k o C h i k a m iCome A l i ve !

Sibylle Eichstaedt

T H E G O L D E N B L A D E 5 01 9 9 8

Working with Destiny IIA Fiftieth Birthday Salute

Owen BarpeldKarmic Experience, Karmic Research and the Power of Empathy

Baruch Ur ie l i

Anthroposophical Medical Work and Karma ConsciousnessMaurice Orange

Biography Work: Awakening to DestinyMargli Matthews

Research Techniques and Life EventsJostein Saether

Discerning DestinyH a r l a n G i l b e r t

Reincarnation TherapyTrui Derwig

Karma and Altered States of ConsciousnessWi l l em Ve l tman

The Uses of AdversityChristopher Clouder

T o u c h s t o n e

Elizabeth A ttwell

o -

D A T E D U E

may 2 9 2MSDEC 2 S 20G8

Rudolf Steiner Library65 Fern Hill RoadGhent, NY 12075(518) 672-7690

rsteinerlibrary@taconic.net

G A Y L O R D PRINTED IN U.S.A.

THE GOLDEN BLADE 2006

C H A R T I N G T H E V O I D

How can we make sense of what is going on in our modern world? And howcan we prepare rightly and responsibly for the future? In a world where thereare few, if any, guidelines for development (as opposed to more of the same),the 2006 issue of the Golden Blade considers mankind's present predicamentin the light of some of the most challenging things Rudolf Steiner said about

the dominant cultural trends of modern t imes.

Problems of the TimeR u d o l f S t e i n e r

Special Spiritual Foundations for the Connection betweenEngland and the United States of America

Virginia Sease

Shadows of Doubt

Terry Goodfcllow

Tr u e C o l u m b i a

Christopher Houghton Budd

The Future of the English LanguageAdam Bi i i leston

Distinguish without DhidingTe r e n c e D a v i e s

B o o k R e w w s :

The Isles by Norman Da\iesSimon Blaxland-de Lange

Poems for the Path by Sean B)TneMargaret Jonas

Co\'er Design;A n n e S t o c k t o n

I S B N 0 - 9 5 3 1 6 0 0 - 8 - 4

I S S N 0 9 6 7 - 6 7 0 8

£ 8